On April 11, 2000, the first two exchange-traded funds (ETF) based on the EURO STOXX 50 and the STOXX Europe 50 were listed on Deutsche Börse in Germany. With this listing, Merrill Lynch International brought a product to Europe which had been established in the U.S. since 1993. In addition to Germany, the trading of ETFs also began in Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K. over the course of the year 2000. Even as the first reactions to these new products were positive, no one at that time really expected the future success that ETFs would experience. The following is a

European investors were further in a risk-on mode over the course of September despite the increased volatility in securities markets. Given the general market environment, it was no surprise that September 2021 was a month with mixed results for the European fund industry since the promoters of mutual funds (-€20.5 bn) faced outflows, while the promoters of ETFs (+€13.0 bn) enjoyed inflows. The overall flow pattern in Europe showed that investors continued to be in risk-on mode in September as the general flow pattern was driven by money market products. In more detail, investors bought further into risky assets as

Over the course of the last few months—actually one could say the last few years—we witnessed a number of mergers and acquisitions in the asset management industry, which are somewhat reshaping the landscape of the global asset management industry. As these activities are happening in all parts of the asset management value chain, I view these corporate transactions rather as clear signs of a matured industry, and not a general consolidation. That said, some of the takeovers are leading to consolidation within their sectors since the number of competitors within these sectors will shrink after the transaction and/or the dominance

At the recent Thomson Reuters Lipper European Alpha Expert Forum, we asked a panel of experts about the drivers of growth and innovation in the passive industry. Gregg Guerin, Senior Product Specialist at First Trust Global Portfolios, Hector McNeil, Co-CEO at HANetf and Jason Xavier, Head of EMEA Capital Markets at Franklin Templeton, examine the rules based approaches which are providing competition to traditional active funds. Topics – Run time: What is driving investors towards factor indices? Advantages of owning the methodology of your index Active manager entering the ETF space MiFID II and the demand for ETFs Liquid alternative

Occasionally, the global mutual fund industry produces a fund manager whose name becomes familiar even to those outside its usual orbit. One of these doyens, Franklin Templeton’s emerging markets (EM) pioneer, Dr. Mark Mobius, is set to retire after an esteemed 30 year career. EM fund launches have been considerable To put the durability of Dr. Mobius into perspective – when we go back to the late 1980s, there were only ten funds in what is now the broad-based Lipper Global Emerging Market Equity Funds classification. Today, there are some 1,200 funds in this classification, and in 2017 alone, we

ETFs have written a success story in Europe over the past 15 years, and the market does not yet seem to be oversaturated. Instead, the opposite seems to be true: the European ETF industry has witnessed a number of new players in the market, despite there being high competition in general in the European ETF market, and some market observers suppose that a number of ETF promoters are not at all profitable. That said, there is a sweet spot (the “smart beta segment”) where the competition is not that high and the pressure on management fees is quite low. Fund

Jake Moeller reviews highlights of presentations by Colin Morton, CIO & Portfolio Manager; Ben Russon, Portfolio Manager; Richard Bullas, Portfolio Manager; and Paul Spencer, Portfolio Manager of Franklin UK Managers’ Focus Fund on November 4, 2014, and April 2, 2015. Leeds is not on the tip of investors’ tongues when they think about the key centers of U.K. equity fund management. However, there—only two hours north of London—resides the core of the former Rensburg Fund Management team, which was cannily acquired by Franklin Templeton in 2011. Quietly (and perhaps wisely) left to its own devices by Franklin, the team has