Som Seif, president of Claymore Investments, says securities laws prohibit ETFs and mutual funds from charging twice.
A sale of the Claymore exchange traded funds business could fetch its owner more than $300-million based on the recent sale of a rival business.
According to Bloomberg News, Claymore owner Guggenheim Partners LLC has hired bankers to seek a buyer for the business, which has $6.8-billion (U.S.) in ETF assets under management.
The price isn't clear, with Bloomberg saying only that the sale could tally hundreds of millions.
The recent sale of a stake in Horizons ETFs provides a benchmark for just how many hundreds of millions.
The seller in that case offloaded 58 per cent of Horizons, a smaller business with $3.3-billion (Canadian) in assets in its 75 funds, for $90-million. The buyer was Korea's Mirae Asset Global Investments Co.
That values the Claymore business at about $326-million. Claymore might fetch a premium because it has a bigger business, ranking No. 2 in Canada behind BlackRock's iShares business.