BlackRock Names Latham Global Head of iShares ETF Business as Tobin Leaves
BlackRock Inc. named Mike Latham global head of its iShares exchange-traded fund unit as part of a reorganization that unites U.S. and non-U.S. portions of the business.
Latham, 44, was previously head of North American iShares, the New York-based firm said today in an e-mailed statement. Rory Tobin, 44, head of the international iShares business, decided to leave BlackRock, the company said.
BlackRock acquired iShares Dec. 1 in its $15.2 billion purchase of San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors from Barclays Plc in London. IShares is the largest provider of ETFs, with $481.2 billion in assets, or 46 percent of the global market, as of May 31, according to BlackRock.
“To optimize our ETF operations worldwide, we’ve decided to reorganize iShares to manage it on a uniform, global basis,” Bobbie Collins, a BlackRock spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview.
IShares’ international business will be overseen by Nick Good in Asia, Daniel Gamba in Latin America and Joe Linhares in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Latham joined BGI in 1994 and was chief operating officer of U.S. iShares before heading North American operations. A graduate of California State University at San Francisco, he was named to iShares’ board of directors and board of trustees in May.
Staying the Course
“Appointing Latham is a signal from BlackRock that they’re supporting the direction iShares has already gone,” David Nadig, director of research for Index Publications LLC in Decatur, Georgia, which publishes a website covering the ETF industry, said in a telephone interview. “They didn’t bring in someone from BlackRock or look for someone from outside.”
Tobin had worked at iShares since 2004.
IShares lost $7.7 billion, or 1.6 percent, of assets in the first five months of 2010, according to BlackRock data. Boston- based State Street Corp., iShares’ closest rival, lost $12 billion, or 7.4 percent, to $149 billion, BlackRock said. Vanguard Group Inc. of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the third- largest player, gained $12.3 billion, or 13 percent, to $104.4 billion.
Unlike mutual funds, which can take deposits or make redemptions once a day, ETFs trade on an exchange all day like stocks. Their assets increased by less than 1 percent this year to $1.04 trillion as of May 31, according to BlackRock.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Condon in Boston at ccondon4@bloomberg.net
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