Cerulli Associates’ Singapore office reports that Australian ETFs have enjoyed a record year as investors leveraged ETFs to make a run for safety and diversification during the pandemic.  

February data from TrackInsight reveals that ETFs continued their seemingly unstoppable growth trajectory to reach a new global high of USD8 trillion, in assets under management, driven by what it calls ‘exploding flows’ in North American markets and huge investor appetite for ESG products.  

The big news in terms of launches this week is the debut of Northern Trust's FlexShares ETFs in Europe with the launch of two climate focused funds. Staying with the green theme, UBS GAM's latest offering is a low CO2 emissions ETF, while Invesco launched a Global Clean Energy fund as well as the first China All Shares ETF. Elsewhere, Invesco added an international equities fund to it's multi-factor suite, and Alger debuted its first active ETF, focused on 40 mid-cap growth stocks.

UBS Global Asset Management (UBS GAM) has launched the UBS (Irl) ETF plc - MSCI World Socially Responsible UCITS ETF (USD) A-acc n Xetra and Börse Frankfurt.

State Street Corporation has been appointed as the fund administrator and transfer agent of the VanEck Bitcoin Trust, a new bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) that is currently pending approval by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Invesco has launched the MSCI China All Shares Stock Connect UCITS ETF, which provides a unique investment opportunity for investors. 

2019 saw South Korean firm Qraft Technologies launch its first two ETFs, through US white labeller ETC, using an investment process based on a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) security selection process that extracts patterns from analysing data.

December 2020 brought news that the US’s thematic ETF specialists, Global X, with assets in early February standing at USD26.3 billion, was to launch a European office.

Invesco has launched the Invesco Global Clean Energy UCITS ETF providing investors in Europe with unique exposure to what the firm believes will be one of the world’s most important long-term investment themes.

Rumi Mahmood, Senior Associate, ESG Research, MSCI has published his first, in what is planned to be a series, of reports on ESG fund transparency.