Reports are listing a San Francisco-based private equity firm as the leading candidate in the bidding war over ETF leader BGI.

That shouldn't come as a big surprise to those following the next evolution of a changing iShares brand.

In case you missed it, weekend stories in papers ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Sunday Times reported that a list of finalists has emerged in the auction of Barclays Global Investors by its parent London bank. Insiders are indicating that Hellman & Friedman LLC could wind up as the leading candidate to assume control of BGI.

As pointed out in the WSJ, that's a private equity firm also based in San Francisco with a history of past relations with the asset manager. Other possibilities, according to the paper, are Bain Capital and other private equity rivals such as TPG and Apax Partners LLP.

Although we've heard some industry

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Look Who's Talkin'

You've heard it all before. But for the uninitiated, we're providing a link to our own Matt Hougan, who was grilled by reporter Trang Ho for this Q&A appearing in Investor's Business Daily on Tuesday.

Hougan comes through, providing what IU.com readers have become accustomed to -- unblinking analysis and fiercely independent commentary on everything relating to ETFs.

You can see

PowerShares exec discusses RAFI-based ETFs' original fee structure and plans to slash those costs, and recent performance turnarounds. 

Ed McRedmond is the senior vice president of portfolio strategies at Invesco PowerShares. He joined the exchange-traded funds provider in 2005 after working for 17 years at A.G. Edwards, where he was associate vice president. While at A.G. Edwards, McRedmond served as a senior analyst covering ETFs and closed-end funds and was part of the team that launched and managed A.G. Edwards' discretionary ETF wrap portfolios.

Earlier this week, IU.com Managing Editor Murray Coleman caught up with McRedmond to find out the reasons behind PowerShares' recent plan to cut fees on its fundamentally based ETFs, as well as developments with other products. (See related story here about the changes to the funds, which are maintained and designed with FTSE Group and Research Affiliates.)

IU: Why did PowerShares decide to cut expense ratios