May 2021 marked the fourteenth consecutive month with inflows into ETFs after the outflows caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. These inflows occurred in a positive but volatile market environment in which investor sentiment was still impacted by the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting actions taken by central banks and governments in Europe and other parts of the world. The positive performance of the underlying markets led in combination with the estimated net inflows to increasing assets under management (from €1,124.0 bn as of April 30, 2021, to €1,144.6 bn at the

April 2021 marked the thirteenth consecutive month with inflows into ETFs after the outflows caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. These inflows occurred in a positive but volatile market environment in which investor sentiment was still impacted by the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and other parts of the world. The positive performance of the underlying markets led in combination with the estimated net inflows to increasing assets under management (from €1,095.2 bn as of March 31, 2021, to €1,124.0 bn at the end of April). The increase of €28.8 bn for April

After the announcement on July 3, 2018, of the takeover of the Commerzbank Equities Markets and Commodities (EMC) unit by Societe Generale, some market observers are speaking about possible further consolidation in the European ETF industry. There are also concerns that the concentration of the market is increasing further, since this takeover means that ComStage (the ETF promoter of Commerzbank) might now become integrated into Lyxor ETF (the ETF promoter of Societe Generale). But are these fears of increasing concentration actually justified, and is the European ETF industry really in a consolidation mode? At first look both assumptions seem to