Fading M&A in passives: Who will be the 'new breed' of ETF players?

Mergers down, but launches on the up

An increasing number of active managers could be set to take advantage of the huge flows into the European ETF market by launching their own product ranges, as merger and acquisition (M&A) interest in the space begins to dry up, industry commentators say.

M&A in the sector has been a major trend over the past few years as providers seek scale in the market, with deals including BlackRock's iShares' purchase of Credit Suisse's ETF business in 2013, while Source and ETF Securities were bought last year by Invesco PowerShares and WisdomTree Investments, respectively. However, the attraction of M&A seems to be waning as Peter Sleep, senior investment manager at 7IM, noted a number of groups' ETF arms have been up for sale over the past year but have not been snapped up. Hector McNeil, co-CEO of 'white label' platform HANetf, attributed the...