WisdomTree has taken on a more aggressive stance in the Europe ETF industry, acquiring the European side of ETF Securities, a London-based ETF issuer.
ETF Securities has agreed to sell its European business to WisdomTree for $611 million in cash and shares, which represents a multiple of 15.7x earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, reflecting the high valuation and scarcity of potential takeover targets in the industry, reports Chris Flood for the Financial Times.
“WisdomTree has entered into an agreement to acquire the European exchange-traded commodity, currency and short-and-leveraged business of ETF Securities,” according to an email note.
The deal is expected to go through by end of March 2018 whereupon WisdomTree will manage about $66 billion in ETF assets and rank as the ninth-largest ETF provider in the world.
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