This week we bring you two themes that have dominated our coverage of the ETF eco-system in recent months – Japan and the lifting of the crypto ETP ban in the UK.
Many congratulations go to the winners in our recent Japanese awards, held at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with issuer data provided by our data partner, Trackinsight.
Featured in the report, Keisuke Arai, New Listings Director at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, explains that ETFs in Japan are enjoying their 30th birthday, having been first launched in 1995 with a fund tracking the Nikkei 300, listed on eight regional exchanges. The industry there is now booming and you can read interviews with Ahmed Ibrahim of State Street on how they see the ETF industry expanding across Asia, and comments from Ji Zhuang, Bloomberg’s APAC Head of Indices, on their business in APAC.
Read more here.
Coincidentally, we also have an interview with Masayuki Abe, Chief Product Manager, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation, another winning firm in our Japanese awards. Here he is talking about the firm’s recent launch of a Japanese small-caps ETF with Clearbrook LLC, targeted at the US market. Abe says that small-cap Japanese stocks will give global investors portfolio diversification. “Small-cap stocks are more domestically related which are less sensitive to the global economy and not many are included in the major indices,” he says. “Less relation to global indices provides more diversification for global investors.”
And then we go back to crypto as the deadline for allowing crypto ETNs in the UK hoves into view. Last week we reported an optimistic Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO of CoinShares, telling Gill Wadsworth that the lifting of the ban gives UK retail investors a choice, and the London Stock Exchange reporting that the growth in the crypto ETN space that they had seen was accelerating. Now we have crypto ETP veteran, Laurent Kssis of CEC Capital, writing that in his opinion the FCA have been inconsistent in their treatment of crypto assets. Kssis writes: “The FCA permits institutional access to crypto derivatives and allows retail investors to buy crypto directly from unregulated exchanges yet somehow considers regulated ETPs too risky. This logic defies market reality and regulatory best practice.”
October 8th will see the ban lifted and we will all find out how popular crypto is with UK retail investors.
In the US this week we had more regulatory news, with the SEC moving towards allowing US asset managers to add ETF share classes to mutual funds. The planned order is specific to Dimensional Fund Advisors which has been at the forefront of lobbying for this.
Amrita Nandakumar, President, Vident Asset Management, says: “While getting regulatory approval for multi-share class is a huge step forward, there is still quite a lot to be done. The industry discussion around multi-share class has more recently focused on the major operational hurdles that still need to be addressed, such as how broker-dealers are going to manage the operational processes and technology that would allow for two different share class structures of the same fund to exist on the same platform.”
Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor
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