Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) has launched Just, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) seeking to provide broad exposure to US large cap equities, with a focus on companies that demonstrate just business behavior, as measured by Just Capital - an independent non-for-profit organization. The ETF seeks to track the Just US Large Cap Diversified Index, constructed by Just Capital.

The new ETF has been priced to investors at 20 basis points and began trading on the NYSE Arca today (June 13) with US$50 million in assets. The index is designed to provide the broad market exposure of the Russell 1000 Index, while featuring only companies with above-average scores across all major social, environmental, and governance issues critical to the American people. Historically, companies in the index on average pay better, create more jobs, pay fewer fines, give twice as much to charity, emit less greenhouse gas, and have higher return on equity, compared with the rest of the Russell 1000.

Companies are ranked by their overall score, and the top 50% by industry are selected and weighted by market cap, arriving at the final index composition. Instead of a niche or single-issue approach, companies are ranked based on a broad range of categories from worker issues - such as providing a living wage and workplace safety - to customer concerns - such as privacy protection and truthful advertising - to environmental impacts - such as minimising pollution and resource efficiency. Just Capital uses data and markets to promote positive change in corporate behavior. To create its rankings and the Index, the firm conducts an annual survey of the American public and then analyses 120,000 data points across 85 unique metrics to score companies based on how they perform on the key issues prioritized by the public.

GSAM started offering ETFs in September 2015 with the launch of the Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta US Large Cap Equity ETF. The firm now has 12 ETFs with over US$8bn in assets under management as of June 11, 2018.

New 'brand value' ETF tracks new Thomson Reuters powered index

EQM Indexes and Brandometry have launched a new index to be tracked by the Brand Value ETF. The index is designed to outperform the broader market by identifying companies with strong brands whose brand value has not been fully appreciated by the market via Tenet Partners' proprietary Brand Power Score methodology.

Intangible assets such as data, intellectual capital and brand value may not explicitly appear on financial statements, but they are a key to recognizing a company's intrinsic value, according to Brandometry. The EQM Brand Value Index, powered by Thomson Reuters, holds US large cap companies and US exchange-traded American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) US$1bn in market cap and above. The index methodology is rules-based and equally weights the top 50 companies exhibiting both a discount of brand and intangible asset value to market capitalization and a positive return on invested capital (ROIC).

Australian provider goes with Solactive for corporate bond tracker
Solactive has licensed its newly launched Solactive Australian Investment Grade Corporate Bond Select TR Index to be used as the basis for BetaShares Australian Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF, by Australian ETF provider BetaShares.

The index seeks to replicate the performance of a portfolio of investment grade, senior corporate bonds denominated in Australian dollars (AUD). The index methodology will favour securities offering superior expected excess returns over Australian government bonds. By selecting bonds based upon expected returns rather than debt outstanding, the index methodology seeks to avoid shortcomings of traditional debt-weighted indices and provide relatively higher returns.

Solactive has previously teamed up with BetaShares on the launch of the Solactive Australia 200 Index underlying BetaShares Australia 200 ETF. The Solactive Australian Investment Grade Corporate Bond Select TR Index is the latest fixed-income index developed together with BetaShares, following the Solactive Australian Bank Senior Floating Rate Bond Index and the Solactive Australian Hybrid Securities Index. The Solactive Australian Investment Grade Corporate Bond Select TR Index is calculated as a total return index. Each security is assigned an equal weight, with a maximum weight per issuer of 7%.

Deutsche's Xtrackers take lead on European inflows

DWS's Xtrackers took more net inflows than any other European exchange-traded product (ETP) provider in the first five months of 2018, according to data provided by independent industry research consultant ETFGI.

Xtrackers exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) registered US$6.4bn in positive net inflows for 2018 to the end of May. This is followed by UBS ETFs with US$6.2bn and iShares with US$4.3bn. Flows into Xtrackers ETFs and ETCs therefore account for 20% of 2018 European market year-to-date aggregate ETP inflows. Xtrackers have a market share of 11% of the European ETP market by assets under management (AUM). Xtrackers ranks second in Europe by AUM, well head of the third-placed asset manager, with a difference of over US$14bn.

Global ETP AUM goes beyond US$5 trillion

Assets invested in ETFs and ETPs listed globally broke through the US$5tr milestone at the end of May 2018, according to ETFGI. According to the research firm, assets invested in ETFs/ETPs listed globally grew by US$30.15bn in May, an increase of 0.71%, from $4.9tr in April 2018. At the end of May 2018, the Global ETF industry had 5,585 ETFs, with 11,624 listings, assets of US$4.8tr, from 339 providers on 68 exchanges in 56 countries. At the end of May 2018, the Global ETF/ETP industry had 7,430 ETFs/ETPs, with 14,140 listings, assets of US$5tr, from 375 providers on 70 exchanges in 57 countries.

May 2018 marked the 52nd consecutive month of net inflows into ETFs/ETPs listed globally, with US$40.9bn gathered during the month; 15.4% less than net inflows at this point last year. The majority of these flows can be attributed to the top 20 ETFs by net new assets, which collectively gathered US$989.5bn in May 2018. The iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA US) on its own accounted for net inflows of US$17.1bn.

Equity ETFs/ETPs listed globally gathered net inflows of US$30.9bn in May bringing net inflows for 2018 to US$148.1bn, which is less than the US$199.5bn in net inflows at this point last year. Fixed Income ETFs and ETPs listed globally gathered net inflows of US$5.41bn in May, growing net inflows for 2018 to US$38.8bn which is less than the US$65.8bn in net inflows at this point last year. Investors have tended to invest in core, market cap and lower cost ETFs in May 2018