Marco Polo Network Inc., an electronic exchange which bills itself as the biggest platform for emerging markets stocks in the world, says it has purchased exchange-traded funds researcher and advisor XTF Global Asset Management LLC.

Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. An official announcement is set for Tuesday.

Marco Polo Network is partially owned by the New York Stock Exchange and the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. The firm was founded in 2000 and allows global investors electronic access to more than 70 local exchanges in 42 emerging markets through a network of 120-plus in-country broker-dealers.

The acquisition by Marco Polo Network comes after a larger ETF manager, Efficient Market Advisors, cut a deal in March to purchase XTF Global's separately managed accounts. Efficient Market Advisors is run by a well-known pioneer in separately managed accounts and former fund company executive Herb Morgan.

In recent years, XTF has reportedly been struggling. Originally a market maker on the American Stock Exchange, it hired a new chief executive, Melvin Herman, in mid-2007. (See related article.)

Marco Polo Network is buying XTF Global's trademarks, intellectual property, technologies and consumer assets. The newly formed Marco Polo XTF will focus on becoming an Internet-based ETF researcher exclusively dedicated to emerging markets investors, sponsors, asset managers and exchanges, according to the company. 

Marco Polo XTF's suite of proprietary research and advisory services will include security-level research, market insights, portfolio construction and optimization, performance benchmarking and attribution, risk management and analysis.  

"XTF's best of breed ETF security level research and advisory services allows us to better serve our growing community of emerging market broker dealers and partners," said Vinode Ramgopal, Marco Polo Network's chief executive, in a statement.

By extending its research coverage of ETFs listed on European, Asian and Latin American exchanges, he added that "Marco Polo XTF will be able to offer customer specific research solutions to accelerate the market adoption of indexed funds. Our customers will benefit from fast and flexible technology transfer within the network and from this network to ETFs and ETF based investment solutions."