Merrill Lynch May Sell Bloomberg Stake

July 5, 2008 9:16 p.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - Merrill Lynch is looking to sell its 20 percent stake in financial news and data provider Bloomberg LP to a blind trust controlled by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, The New York Post reported on Friday.

Last quarter, Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said the company would look to sell assets in order to raise capital. The investment back has since sold off its Chicago Merrill Lynch Capital unit to General Electric for $1.3 billion. New shares of the company were also sold to Temasek Holdings, raising an additional $5 billion.

In 1981, Merrill provided start-up money for the Bloomberg business. That investment now has an estimated worth between $5 and $10 billion according to analysts, the Post said.

Past asset sales and the potential Bloomberg sale are part of a $50 billion capital raising plan, the newspaper said.

Thain had previously discussed the possibility of selling the Bloomberg stake, as well as their stake in BlackRock Inc. The BlackRock stake is worth roughly $13 billion.

"There are some liquidity restrictions on BlackRock and Bloomberg, but I don't believe that that would prevent us, if we decided to, from using either of them as means of raising capital," Thain said on a June 11 conference call, according to MarketWatch.

"We definitely at least considered and particularly we considered the Bloomberg stake at the end of last year, about whether or not we wanted to sell that," he added.