Before the financial crisis occurred in 2008, the market share of the main replication methods used by ETF promoters in Europe was nearly evenly split between physical (full/optimized) and synthetic replication. That said, one needs to bear in mind that the vast majority of assets in the European ETF industry was invested in equity ETFs at this point in time. This changed in the aftermath of the financial crisis as European investors realized that a swap or other derivatives used for synthetic replication have a counterparty risk and, therefore, avoided ETFs which were using synthetic replication where possible. As a

Within the current market environment in the European ETF industry where the estimated net inflows are at a record high level and assets under management (AUM) are moving from one all-time-high to the next, one may think that it must be easy for ETF promoters to participate from the trend toward ETFs. Frankly speaking, nothing could be farther from the truth than such a statement. The European ETF industry is highly concentrated at the assets under management and the fund flows level. This means that the vast majority of assets are held by a small number of ETF promoters. The

A lot has been said and written about the growth of active and semi-active ETFs in the U.S. Even in Europe, where active/semi-active ETFs are still at the beginning, one sees news and media coverage around the emerging segment of active/semi-active ETFs every day. Conversely, there is literally no media coverage on the development of active/semi-active ETFs in Asia, Australia, or South America. This lack of information may lead to the question of whether active/semi-active ETFs are a global phenomenon? In other words, are active/semi-active ETFs are of interest to investors in other parts of the world? An analysis of

There is currently a lot of noise around active ETFs in Europe. But is the trend toward active or semi-active ETFs really so strong or are all the headlines on this topic are just chasing attention? Generally speaking, the trend toward active/semi-active ETFs is visible as an increasing number of managers of actively managed mutual funds speak about possible launches of respective ETFs, while only a small number of these managers have launched an active/semi-active ETF so far. But how big is the market for active/semi-active at the moment? Is it really worthwhile that this market segment gets so much

It is common sense that Luxembourg is the leading fund domicile for mutual funds in Europe, while Ireland is the leading domicile for ETFs. Nevertheless, it might be somewhat surprising to see the level of dominance of Ireland’s position when it comes to ETFs. At the end of June 2024, ETFs domiciled in Ireland accounted for €1,314.7 bn, or 72.46%, of the overall assets under management in the European ETF industry, while Luxembourg accounted for €335.1 bn, or 18.47%, of the overall AUM. In turn, this means that all other ETF domiciles in Europe combined account for only 9.07% of

Funds investing in U.S. equities enjoyed healthy inflows over the course of the last few years. Does that mean that European investors have overweighted U.S. equities in their portfolios, or did they just catch up with the weighting of U.S. equities in the prominent global equity indices? With regard to the estimated fund flows it needs to be said that equity global was the best-selling equities classification over the course of the last few years. The high inflows into funds classified as equity global are not surprising since equity global is the largest Lipper global classification in Europe by assets

Investors, market observers, and regulators always raise questions about the competitiveness of the European exchange-traded fund industry since the assets under management seem to be concentrated among a few ETF promoters. Generally speaking, I would agree with the statement that one needs to be concerned if a few players are dominating a market. However, this is not the case when it comes to the European ETF industry. Graph 1 shows that the European ETF industry is highly concentrated at the promoter level since the 10-top promoters in Europe held between 93.25% (June 30, 2023) and 94.63% (June 30, 2020) of

As ETFs are registered for sales in different countries and listed on multiple exchanges and trading venues, they can be considered as true cross-border products. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of ETFs traded in Europe are domiciled in the international fund hubs of Ireland and Luxembourg. Assets Under Management in the European ETF Domiciles Even as ETFs are true cross-border products, there are some regulatory requirements that force the promoters of ETFs to domicile ETFs in countries other than Ireland and Luxembourg to serve investors. One example of this is precious metals ETFs domiciled in Switzerland. The

Vodafone is figuring out how to go it alone. The 58 billion pound mobile operator and cable group Liberty Global ended talks over a tie-up in 2015. The possibility of a deal hasn’t gone away. But an improving outlook and fibre-broadband growth plans in Germany and Britain make a combination with John Malone’s group – or anyone else – less urgent. Boss Vittorio Colao upped his EBITDA growth forecast for the financial year ending in March 2018 to 10 percent excluding currency movements, deals, joint ventures and one-offs. The previous forecast of between 4 percent and 8 percent was outstripped

Observing the monthly flows into the European exchange-traded fund (ETF) industry, one might get the impression that the inflows go only to a limited number of ETF promoters and only to a limited number of funds that have shown significant growth in assets under management. If this thesis were true, the market share of the funds with high net inflows would increase more and more over time, up to a point where these funds would dominate the whole European ETF industry. On the other hand, the European ETF industry is very innovative and widens its product offerings frequently, enabling existing