Every market participant in the European ETF industry knows that Europe or even the EU are far away from a single market when it comes to ETF trading. Respectively, many ETF promoters list their ETFs on different exchanges to reach as many investors as possible. What sounds like a very appropriate approach to maximize the opportunities for ETF distribution also has some negative effects. Since the ETF promoters have to pay fees and expenses for any exchange listing, this means that the ETF promoters needs at least some trading volume in a given ETF on the respective exchange to cover

As a professional market observer, you know that the marketing departments are sometimes very creative when it comes to the name for a fund. This is especially true in the segment of sustainable investment themes. But can retail investors distinguish between a marketing driven fund name and the reality of investment portfolio? I don’t think so. The fact that misleading fund names might be used to attract retail investors money should a concern for market watch dogs, since these investors are often not able to understand the language used in the respective sales documents and/or can’t evaluate if the portfolio

On January 30, 2024, the HM Treasury has confirmed that European Economic Area (EEA) states will be considered as “equivalent” under the new Overseas Fund Regime (OFR) for UCITS, excluding money market funds. The OFR is expected to be rolled out in April 2024 to replace the Temporary Marketing Permission Regime (TMPR) within a prolonged transition period until December 2026 to smoothen the transition. The new OFR shall remove post-Brexit barriers for newly launched EU-domiciled funds and ETFs to enter the U.K. market when the products meet the necessary retail disclosure requirements. Even further, the U.K. government does not intend

On November 1, 2023, the UN PRI published in cooperation with the CFA Institute (CFA) and the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA) Definitions for Responsible Investment Approaches, with the aim to refine and harmonize terminology to provide common definitions for the essential elements of five responsible investment approaches. From my point of view, such a harmonized language about responsible investment approaches is much needed because we see that asset managers and investors use different terms to describe the same investment approach or vice versa. This causes some confusion, since asset managers are not sure if they can fulfill the requirements

The implementation of ESG criteria has put asset managers around the globe under pressure. On one hand, the industry is facing greenwashing allegations from regulators and market observers for not be strict enough with the implementation of ESG-criteria into their portfolio management processes. On the other hand, some states in the US have banned asset managers that have implement environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria (especially the exclusion of fossil fuel, gas, and fracking) in their portfolio management processes from managing pensions or other state-related assets. All this is happening while stakeholders from the asset management industry, governments, regulatory bodies,