Ticker Talk

Banking titan Bank of America said Wednesday it will buy the remaining 50% of Denver-based Marsico Capital Management it doesn’t already own.

The purchase, for $1.1 billion, is another in a series of recent deals that have seen mutual fund firms snapped up by banking and insurance giants looking to broaden their product bases.

Marsico, which has $15 billion in assets under management, specializes in large growth stocks. The firm was formed in 1997 by Tom Marsico after he left Janus Funds.

In recent months, United Asset Management agreed to be bought by Britain’s Old Mutual, Pioneer Group was snapped up by Italy’s UniCredito Italiano and Germany’s Allianz bought the Pimco funds group. . . .

Frank Russell Co., which maintains the Russell stock indexes, is changing 622 companies in the Russell 3,000-stock index as part of its annual rebalancing of its indexes. Russell each year at this time rejiggers the indexes’ composition so that 3,000 largest companies by market capitalization (stock price times shares outstanding) are in the main index. The most widely followed Russell index is the Russell 2,000, which is the smallest of 3,000 stocks in the total universe. The entire universe is, predictably, becoming more tech-heavy. To see which companies are new to the indexes and which are being dumped, go to https://www.russell.com.