Guggenheim Partners is “considering options” for its Claymore Investments unit, the Canadian exchange-traded funds business it acquired two years ago, including a sale, Bloomberg reports.

Guggenheim has reportedly hired JP Morgan Chase & Co and the Royal Bank of Canada to find buyers for the Canadian business, which had around $6.8 billion in assets under management as of 31 October. The sale-price is expected to be “in the hundreds of millions,” according to the publication.

A representative from Guggenheim could not be reached.

Claymore Investments was acquired through Guggenheim’s purchase of Claymore Group, completed in 2009. When Guggenheim rebranded Claymore Group to Guggenheim Funds Distributors back in September 2010, the Canadian investment division did not get renamed.

Guggenheim Partners, which oversees over $125 billion in assets and is based in Chicago and New York, "remains committed" to the US exchange-traded funds market, even as it looks to reduce its presence in Canada, according to the report. 

Guggenheim Funds ranked as the seventeenth largest ETF/ETP provider in the US by assets at the end of the first quarter 2011, according to BlackRock.  

At the end of the first quarter the US market was worth some $950 billion in assets, with 29 providers competing on two exchanges, BlackRock said. Over the first quarter, assets under management in the industry rose by 6.6 per cent and 53 funds were launched.