Luxembourg-based CVC Capital Partners has reached an agreement to buy Barclays Global Investors for $4.4 billion, according to a statement Thursday by Barclays Plc, the exchange-traded fund provider's current owner.

"The fact that Barclays was able to attract such an attractive price is a strong statement for the value of the ETF industry as a whole," said Robert Holderith, chief executive at Emerging Global Shares and the former managing director of institutional sales at ProFunds.

It was only a few weeks ago that rumors that the unit was for sale began to emerge. Once those were confirmed, CVC was eventually identified as the preferred buyer for the San Francisco-based ETF business.

Barclays has repeatedly refused to accept funds from the British government as part of a rescue program for financial institutions, presumably because it wanted to avoid being even partially nationalized. However, the bank still needed to raise cash, and the sale of iShares should help with that.

A Barclays statement announcing the deal contains the key elements agreed upon by both parties. The release states that Barclays will realize "an expected net gain on sale of US$2.2 billion."

Barclays is financing the bulk of the deal, providing loans on reasonably favorable terms for $3.1 billion of the $4.4 billion deal.

While this is largely a done deal, there are caveats in the terms that allow Barclays to shop for a better deal. Barclays has a 45-day window to look for alternative and superior offers. If Barclays finds a better offer, it will pay a $175 million breakup fee to CVC Capital.

Management at Barclays owns up to 10% of iShares, and will be paid a cash dividend based on its stakes in the deal. Barclays CEO Robert Diamond Jr. is expected to earn $6.9 million from the deal; he did not participate in the consideration of the iShares transaction.

The press release also contains interesting information about the iShares business itself, including that it earned approximately $440 million in EBITDA profits in 2008, on revenues of more than $900 million.

The value of the agreement, according to BGI, is around a multiple of 10.1 times 2008 EBITDA.

But taking into account the fact that the firm's ETF assets have fallen about 20% between the end of the first quarter last year and Q1 2009, that figure would appear to be somewhat low.

At current asset levels, such a valuation could be closer to 12-13 times 2009 EBITDA, estimates John Hyland, manager of the United States Oil Fund (NYSE: USO).

He has been noting deal prices for asset managers over the past several years and believes that the CVC agreement appears to result in an attractive valuation for its current owner.

"At around 12 times EBITDA, that would seem to be a pretty good sale price in this environment for Barclays," said Hyland.

Emerging Global Shares CEO Holderith believes that such a strong multiple will help the industry as a whole.

He points out that BGI made little secret of its intent to unload the iShares business. "It wasn't a fire sale, but certainly this was a deal with a certain amount of distress from the seller's standpoint," said Holderith.

As expected, the share-lending business is not included in the deal.