Edward Ulysses Cate

BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors: Why the Market Loves This Deal

If it's a win-win situation, why did $630 million of their customers' money disappear into 400 hands? There's only one way to sum this deal up: Snakes in Suits Slither Beneath Black Rock. Those behind Barclays drew too much attention to themselves via their slogan of "Quietly Conquering The Financial World," so now the major holder of our public corporations will appear as BlackRock rather than Barclays. Same circus, same clowns, different banner. Green shoots was actually the eye of the financial hurricane. You ain't seen nothing yet. Gawd, I hope I'm wrong.

Report: BlackRock Wins BGI Bidding War

So bizarre. BlackRock's major holder is PNC Financial. Barclays is the major holder in PNC, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. CVC is an offshoot of Citigroup, of which Barclays is a major holder. They're just moving paper around, smoke and mirrors, so folks don't figure out that the same group still controls the plantations. Barclays didn't set up the quietlyconquering.com site for nothing, although they did drop the "Quietly conquering the world of finance" slogan from their advertising. Same circus, different clowns.