Barclays Global Investors is poised to buy Indexchange, the €13.4bn ($17bn) passive and exchange-traded funds business of Germany's HVB, in a deal that could be signed this week.

Sources close to the transaction said the UK asset management group was the leading bidder for Indexchange and a sale agreement with UniCredit, owner of HVB, was imminent. They said Barclays had beaten off stiff competition from France's Lyxor, a subsidiary of Société Générale, and Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest marketmakers for exchange-traded funds. Merrill Lynch has been running the sale for UniCredit and is understood to have set a price of more than €100m. An Indexchange buyout would boost Barclays' growing exchange-traded funds business iShares, which runs €10.3bn in assets in Europe. However, it has been slow to win business in Germany. Indexchange has become one of Europe's biggest exchange-traded funds sellers since it launched in 2000 and last year won business worth more than €2.5bn in Germany. Barclays Global Investors last month hired Andreas Fehrenbach, former chief executive of Activest, the former funds arm of HVB, to become German head of iShares. Fehrenbach led a turnround at Activest, which UniCredit merged into its funds arm Pioneer Investments when it acquired HVB last year. Indexchange remained independent of Pioneer Investments. Fehrenbach previously spent two years on the management committee of Indexchange. A German consultant said: "There is speculation that Fehrenbach's terms for joining Barclays included Barclays buying his team at Indexchange. It is a good exchange-traded funds marketing operation." Sources close to the sale said there had been a lot of foreign interest in acquiring Indexchange. One said: "There were many investment banks pitching because they see potential overlaps having an exchange-traded funds business alongside their market making capabilities."