The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relative to wealth advisors and their clients.

Wisdom Tree
WisdomTree, a global financial innovator, has just expanded its Efficient Core exchanged-traded fund (ETF) range in Europe with the launch of the WisdomTree Global Efficient Core UCITS ETF (NTSG).

NTSG, which aims to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the WisdomTree Global Efficient Core Index, has a Total Expense Ratio (TER) of 0.25 per cent. NTSG, listed on Tuesday on Börse Xetra and Borsa Italiana, will also list on the London Stock Exchange this week.

The index is designed to deliver a 90 per cent exposure to large cap global developed equities and 60 per cent to global government bond futures.

The ETF invests 90 per cent of its assets in a diversified basket of large cap companies which meet WisdomTree’s ESG criteria, the firm said in a statement. To help magnify the benefits of the asset allocation, a 60 per cent exposure to global government bond futures is then overlaid on top, using the remaining 10 per cent of the portfolio as cash collateral for the futures. The futures portfolio consists of US, German, UK and Japanese government bond futures contracts with maturities ranging from two to 30 years. The exposures are rebalanced quarterly.

WisdomTree Global Efficient Core UCITS ETF will form part of WisdomTree's $1.5 billion range of Efficient Core strategies.

“Through this range of ETFs investors can make their capital work harder by enhancing the efficiency of core asset allocation while improving a portfolio’s risk/return profile,” Alexis Marinof, head of Europe, WisdomTree, said.

Recently, a number of investment managers have been launching ETFs, which are listed and traded like stocks. Last October, Franklin Templeton launched two Ireland-domiciled passively managed UCITS exchange-traded funds – the Franklin FTSE Emerging ex-China UCITS ETF and the Franklin FTSE Emerging Markets UCITS ETF.  

ETFs have surged in use in recent years, with large gains before and after the 2008 financial crash as investors sought low-cost ways of tapping into rising markets, and as the case for “active” funds came under pressure. See more commentary here and here.

SuMi TRUST
Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management (SuMi Trust), a large Japanese asset manager, has announced that its Sakigake High Alpha – Japan Thematic Growth fund, a UCITS vehicle domiciled in Luxembourg, has become available to UK institutional investors.

The fund forms part of SuMi TRUST’s overall Sakigake strategy, which was launched in 2003. The strategy, which currently has over $1.5 billion assets under management, has delivered a return of 342.28 per cent above the benchmark TOPIX since inception, the firm said in a statement.

The UCITS vehicle was launched in 2018. Classified as article 8 under the EU’s Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) it has total AuM of $37 million. It has outperformed the TOPIX since inception, with 10.98 per cent return vs 9.39 per cent and so far this year during the recent stock market rally, with a return of 18.59 per cent to 14.25 per cent, the firm added.

The strategy and fund invest in the mid and large cap Japanese companies that are ahead of the curve in addressing structural issues or solving societal problems. As such, the fund follows both a bottom-up and thematic approach and is weighted towards information technology and industrial stocks. The fund invests solely in listed Japanese companies.

Key holdings include Maruwa, a specialist manufacturer of the ceramic components – designed to withstand extremely high temperatures – which are pivotal in data centres, and Tokyo Electron, a Japanese semiconductor company. Portfolio manager Katsunori Ogawa has been responsible for the overall strategy and the UCITS fund since inception.