By Dawn Lim, Ben Dummett and William Louch

BlackRock Inc. said it has entered into an exclusive agreement to buy French software firm eFront, a move by the world's largest money manager to become a bigger provider of the technology used by Wall Street.

The offer from the New York firm is to pay $1.3 billion in cash for 100% equity in eFront. The software company provides reporting on private equity and alternatives for financial institutions, tracking everything from fees to deals to fundraising.

BlackRock said for the deal to be completed eFront's employee-works council has to be notified and shareholders from both companies have to enter into a definitive securities sale agreement. The French firm is backed by European private-equity firm Bridgepoint, which bought the software company in 2015 for about EUR300 million, or about $341 million.

For BlackRock, the bid is part of a larger effort to diversify away from the stock-and-bond offerings that it is best known for as the asset-management industry comes under increasing price pressure. Chief Executive Laurence Fink has said he wants more of the company's revenue tied to technology.

At present, BlackRock's best known tech offering is a suite of tools that financial institutions use to measure risk called Aladdin. The firm is hoping that clients can use eFront's tools alongside Aladdin to have a more robust set of options to assess their portfolios, a person familiar with the matter said.

Investor appetite for higher-returning alternatives to stocks and bonds has exploded in recent years, creating more demand for tools to monitor complex investments. Many pensions and endowments have struggled to monitor fees and piece together information about their fund investments in private equity even as they continue to pour money into that asset class.

The deal also gives BlackRock, which has about $6 trillion in assets under management, more tools to help it invest in nontraditional investments, a priority for the firm. The firm has about $112 billion in private equity, infrastructure and other strategies known as alternatives.

The transaction could also give BlackRock a bigger footprint in France as it looks to expand in parts of the world where it doesn't dominate.

Write to Dawn Lim at dawn.lim@wsj.com, Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com and William Louch at william.louch@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 22, 2019 10:26 ET (14:26 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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