ETFs: investors’ flexible friends

Exchange-traded funds have proliferated in Europe, offering institutional investors enormous investment choice and liquidity at a low cost. We find out how and why these products are attracting the interest of a diverse range of investors and look at the future potential of the industry. Dawn Cowie reports

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ETF's flexibility is part of their attraction for investors

Ten years after the introduction of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Europe and few would have predicted that 85–90% of the users of these passively managed, index-tracking funds would be institutional, not retail investors. Or, even more surprisingly, that hedge funds would have been the fastest-growing group of global users over this period. The compound annual growth rate for this group of active investors was 42.4% over the 11 years to the end of 2008, according to a recent research report by

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