BlackRock switches benchmarks on U.S. bond ETFs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackRock Inc said on Friday it will change the benchmarks on four iShares Treasury exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from Barclays' Treasury bond indexes to ICE's Treasury bond indexes, effective on or after March 31.

The four iShares ETFs affected by the switch are the iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF; iShares 3-7 Year Treasury Bond ETF; iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF and iShares 20-plus Year Treasury Bond ETF, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, said in a statement.

The funds are among the most popular U.S. taxable bond ETFs with combined assets of nearly $36 billion, according to data from Morningstar.

Interactive Data, which oversees the ICE bond indexes, is a subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange which operates the New York Stock Exchange.

“Choosing Interactive Data as the new benchmark provider for four of our Treasury ETFs occurred after a thorough due diligence, testing and selection process,” Ira Shapiro, a managing director at BlackRock said in a statement.

BlackRock's move came after Barclays sold its benchmark indices and risk analytics business to financial information provider Bloomberg for about 520 million pounds ($781 million) in December.

Even after the switch, BlackRock will still have a large suite of ETFs that track Barclays' bond indexes including the widely held iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF, which has $31.6 billion in assets.

(Reporting by Richard Leong and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Chris Reese and Meredith Mazzilli)

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