BlackRock has introduced iShares MSCI World Small Cap Ucits ETF. The exchange-traded fund, which has March 27 as its inception date, holds assets of US$280m (as of March 30) and tracks the MSCI World Small Cap Index. The index measures the performance of small capitalisation companies across developed markets globally which comply with MSCI's size, liquidity and free float criteria. The index is a free float-adjusted market capitalisation weighted index which means that only shares readily available in the market rather than all of a company's issued shares are used in calculating the index.
Free float-adjusted market capitalisation is the share price of a company multiplied by the number of shares readily available in the market. State Street Custodial Services (Ireland) Limited is the custodian of the fund. Registered countries include Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
HANetf, the independent 'white label' Ucits ETF platform, has appointed Irish corporate law firm A&L Goodbody, to provide legal, regulatory and taxation advice to HANetf and its on-platform clients. This comes as the company prepares to proceed with a number of clients planning to launch ETFs this year via an Irish domiciled platform.
HANetf was founded by ETF industry veterans and co-CEOs, Nik Bienkowski and Hector McNeil in August 2017. The company aims to lowers the barriers to entry for prospective ETF issuers by providing a fully managed solution including product development, capital markets, sales, marketing and distribution.
Aquila Capital has launched the AC-Adaptive Trends Fund which combines various investment strategies such as momentum and carry with an innovative risk-balancing portfolio construction method allowing it to implement long and short positions. The next generation managed futures or commodity trading advisor (CTA) Ucits compliant-fund will be managed by the companies Systematic Trading Group.
The fund, which was launched on March 26, aims to generate positive performance in most market conditions by investing in global futures contracts across equities, bonds, commodities and currencies, enabling a broad diversification of the strategy. The fund has started with over €30m in assets under management.
Earlier, on March 19, the alternative investment company launched its new energy transition strategy, ETIF (Energy Transition Infrastructure Fund. ETIF will pursue three subsectors of the energy transition, namely energy generation, energy storage and energy transportation. It is planned to launch the strategy as a Luxembourg-based Reserved Alternative Investment Fund (RAIF) with a target volume of €750m and a term of 12 years. The target net internal rate of return (IRR) is 8% to 10% per annum.
Deutsche Asset Management's Xtrackers has launched two ETFs focussed on high dividend companies on Xetra and Börse Frankfurt. The two new equity index ETFs are designed to enable investors to participate in the performance of stock corporations with high dividend yields.
The Xtrackers Morningstar US Quality Dividend Ucits ETF aims to replicate the performance of the Morningstar Dividend Yield Focus Index which is designed to reflect the performance of shares, issued by US based companies, which pay high dividends.
The second ETF, Xtrackers MSCI World High Dividend Yield Ucits ETF, tracks the performance before fees and expenses of the MSCI World High Dividend Yield Index. The Index is based on the MSCI World Index, which includes shares of large and medium sized companies across 23 developed markets countries.
Innovator Capital Management has announced an interim investment advisory agreement whereby the company will replace Elkhorn Investments as the investment adviser to the Elkhorn Lunt Low Vol/High Beta Tactical ETF (LVHB) and Elkhorn S&P High Quality Preferred ETF (EPRF), effective as of April 1, 2018.
Brompton Funds Limited, the manager of each of Global Healthcare Income & Growth Fund (HIG.UN) and Tech Leaders Income Fund (TLF.UN) has announced that both funds have completed their conversions to ETFs as approved by unitholders at a meeting held on February 28, 2018. A final prospectus dated March 28, 2018 has been filed with the securities regulatory authorities in each province and territory in Canada. Commencing on April 3, HIG.UN has become Global Healthcare Income & Growth ETF and TLF.UN has become Tech Leaders Income ETF. Units of the funds were converted to units of the applicable ETF on a 1:1 basis.