Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said that the world’s largest brokerage would consider selling its stakes in news and financial data company Bloomberg and money manager BlackRock if it needed more capital, reports Reuters. Speaking on a conference call, Thain said Merrill Lynch was “well capitalised,” but added that the company last year considered selling its roughly $13bn stake in BlackRock or its roughly $5bn-$6bn stake in Bloomberg. Thain’s apparent willingness to shed some of the firm’s strongest assets signal how difficult capital raising has become for investment banks.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 5:43 and is filed under Capital markets, M&A, People. Tagged with blackrock, bloomberg, john thain, merrill lynch. Edit this entry.