The pending $13.5 billion deal to sell Barclays Global Investors to BlackRock Inc. won't include the iPath family of exchange-traded notes.

In a written statement to a question by IndexUniverse.com, Barclays Capital, the investment banking and indexing arm of parent Barclays Plc, responded on Monday morning:

"IPath is not part of this transaction and will continue to be legally owned and supported by Barclays Capital ... there will be no change here."

The statement also said that, "as we work through the transition, we will define whether BGI will continue to support these products through an agreement with Barclays or if the services will be transitioned over to Barclays."

The company concluded that, in either case, "clients will continue to be serviced and supported."

That makes sense since iPaths are issued by the London-based bank and supported as well as distributed through Barclays Capital. In the past, BGI's role has been limited to using its popular—and much larger—iShares exchange-traded funds family to promote the iPaths.

IndexUniverse.com decided to formally request clarity on the situation following questions by readers. A spokeswoman for Barclays Capital said nobody else had asked about the iPaths and the BlackRock deal up to that point.

BlackRock late Thursday announced it had agreed to buy BGI for $13.5 billion. (See related story here.)

Still to come, however, could be a second offer by CVC Capital. The private equity manager had originally agreed to buy just the iShares business from Barclays. But the $4.4 billion deal had a walkaway clause for BGI, allowing it to shop for a better price up to June 18.

CVC could return to the bargaining table. If it doesn't, under terms of the original agreement, it is due to receive some $175 million in penalty fees from Barclays.

At the end of May, iShares had nearly $290 billion in assets. By contrast, ETNs as a whole had about $5.8 billion in assets, with Barclays' notes dominating the field. Those had almost $3.3 billion of the total pie at the time, according to the National Stock Exchange.