Latest News

Mutual fund pioneer MFS Financial investment Management introduces first ETFs

MFS Investment Management, the Bostonbased asset manager that revealed the world's first openended shared fund a century back, is making a venture into exchangetraded funds with the launch of 5 ETFs on Thursday.

Three of the ETFs are connected to the stock market, while the other two offer core bond and community bond direct exposure, respectively, the firm said in a news release.

This is not about launching a new service, however about providing our existing capabilities to investors in a brand-new lorry or bundle, the ETF, Michael Roberge, CEO of MFS, told Reuters.

Financiers have stacked nearly $1 trillion into ETFs this year, with a booming U.S. stock market and an expansion of new products fueling the record inflow.

The appeal of ETFs has actually spurred conventional possession management firms such as Fidelity and Invesco to launch their own offerings over the last few years to take on industry giants like State Street Global Advisors, Vanguard and BlackRock .

While MFS was an extremely early mover in the shared fund company, releasing the Massachusetts Investors Trust fund in 1924, it has been fairly slow to get in the progressively competitive ETF arena, analysts said.

There are still some latecomers to this item that have been slower and more cautious, stated Bryan Armour, ETF analyst at Morningstar. As active ETFs have actually exploded in size, the inspiration for them to commit resources to ETFs has actually grown.

ETFs are more liquid than mutual funds, considering that they can be traded on an exchange throughout the day, and more tax effective. They also tend to have lower management fees.

The five ETFs are MFS Active Value, MFS Active Growth, MFS Active International, MFS Active Core Plus Bond and MFS Active Intermediate Muni Bond. They mirror existing MFS strategies, Roberge said.

Armour indicated Tuesday's debut of the first ETF from Harris Associates L.P., the Oakmark U.S. Large Cap ETF, handled by Expense Nygren, as another recent example of a top mutual fund name moving into ETFs.

(source: Reuters)