State Street to buy IFS
US-based State Street Bank, the #1 mutual-funding service company, announced it will buys Investors Financial Services (IFS). The deal is for between $4 and $4.5 billion. Both companies are located in Boston.
IFS provides such services as accounting, investment-advisory, and transaction management services to its clients, mostly in the booming hedge fund and asset management field.
According to a Bloomfield story ("State Street Agrees to Acquire Investors Financial," 2/5/07), "After the acquisition, 215-year-old State Street will service about a third of the $10.4 trillion in U.S. mutual-fund assets and a quarter of the $1.4 trillion in hedge funds worldwide."
Some see the action as a reaction to an earlier deal by Mellon Bank and the Bank of New York. That $16.5 billion deal will make the combined company the #1 custody bank. The State Street deal will make it #2, ahead of JP Morgan. There's no doubt that the somewhat quiet, behind-the-scenes financial services market is growing, while the numbers of players is shrinking.
Already this year, State Street announced it would buy currency trader Curernex for $564 million.
