State Street Corporation and State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street, announced today that UNICO Asset Management S.A. has awarded mandates to State Street Luxembourg and SSgA Munich to service and manage UNICO i-tracker funds, a new series of index funds scheduled to launch on March 1. UNICO Asset Management S.A. is a wholly-owned Luxembourg-based subsidiary of Union Fonds Holding AG, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.
The UNICO i-tracker funds, which will initially consist of ten funds, are designed to meet the needs of European institutional investors, allowing them to exploit the attractiveness of the indices as benchmarks and weight their portfolios to be completely or partially market-neutral. The new series of funds will comprise the DAX 30, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, and seven Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) tracking European sector indices from Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) including the MSCI World index.
Oliver S. Bauer, the Marketing Director of UNICO Asset Management S.A. said, “UNICO prides itself on being a market leader that brings innovative products to the marketplace to help our clients meet their objectives. In State Street, we have a partner that shares this passion for excellence and innovation. These attributes, combined with their clear leadership in investment management and servicing, make them the ideal partner to help us deliver value to our clients as we launch this exciting new product.”
State Street is the #1 servicer of U.S. mutual and pension funds, the servicer for approximately half of the world’s ETF assets, and the world’s third largest global custodian. State Street’s proprietary single multicurrency account and custody system, HorizonSM, is a seamless, flexible global servicing system that eliminates the constraints imposed by time zones. Horizon’s proprietary automated ETF capabilities work in tandem with the system’s traditional accounting and custody functions to support and report on each fund.
State Street Global Advisors is the #1 investment manager of U.S. pension assets, and the global market leader in ETFs with nearly a 50% market share and more than $35 billion in 39 ETFs under management worldwide.
“We are pleased that a prestigious entity like UNICO Asset Management has selected us to provide a unique blend of services to support its new UNICO i-tracker fund series,” said Klaus Esswein, managing director, SSgA, Munich. “This opportunity marks an exciting first for State Street as we team up with our Luxembourg colleagues to provide our collective expertise in servicing and managing ETFs. Our complementary strengths, combined with our years of experience in managing and servicing SSgA’s own portfolio of innovative ETFs, provides us with a unique set of skills that will enable us to offer a level of service that few can match.”
Tim Caverly, managing director of State Street’s investor services business in Europe added, “This exceptional assignment will call on skills from across our organization, and we are looking forward to working with UNICO to deliver the first-rate services for which we are so well known.”