Managers of active funds may seem strange people to target when you are trying to sell passive exchange traded funds. But that is one of the tactics Deutsche Bank is using to expand its relatively young ETF business, according to Thorsten Michalik, head of Deutsche Banks db x-trackers division.
ETFs used to be mainly about providing a cheap way for investors to track high-profile indices. The pioneering S&P Depositary Receipts nicknamed spiders were introduced in 1993 to track the S&P 500 index and now have assets of $78.4 billion (43 billion, 53.2 billion).
Since then ETFs have grown in scope. They can be tailored to track regions, sectors, commodities, bonds, futures, and other asset classes and increasingly look like a low-cost alternative to active mutual funds, especially as the majority of stock pickers on average fail to beat the market in the long-term.
The full story is available at the Financial Timess web-site.