The index benchmarking business of Barclays has been lapped up by financial data services provider Bloomberg for about £520 million. Barclays had been trying to sell its risk analytics and index solutions for nearly two years. The indexing businesses sell a range of financial products that rely on data provided by their own trading desk as well from third-party sources such as exchanges. The two sides will maintain a co-branding arrangement on the benchmark indices for an initial term of five years. Bloomberg had also bought bond indices and took control of commodity indices formerly owned by UBS in recent years. Barclays originally bought the indexing business in 2008 along with other parts of the collapsed US investment bank Lehman Brothers.
