American Century has made its European debut with two active ETFs capturing global equities and small caps.
The Avantis Global Equity UCITS ETF (AVWC) and Avantis Global Small Cap Value UCITS ETF (AVWS) listed on the Deutsche Boerse today with total expense ratios (TERs) of 0.22% and 0.39%, respectively.
AVWC will actively select large, mid and small-cap securities from developed markets and seek to outperform by overweighting securities the manager identifies as trading at lower valuations and with higher profitability ratios. The ETF is benchmarked against the MSCI World IMI index.
AVWS employs the same selection criteria but with a specific focus on smaller companies and is benchmarked against the MSCI World Small Cap Value index.
Tapping the low tracking error style of active management style which has gained traction so far within European ETFs, American Century’s maiden offerings will seek to minimise turnover and unnecessary risks while maximising diversification.
The firm also registered the Avantis Emerging Markets Equity UCITS ETF with the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) but has yet to launch the strategy.
The ETFs have been launched by Avantis Investors, the firm’s quantitative investment unit, led by CIO Eduardo Repetto (pictured).
Repetto commented: “We have been asked for a long time now when we will have offerings available outside the United States, so this is a great day.
“Many investors have found value in our approach to building portfolios, and we are happy to bring our low-cost, well-diversified strategies to the European marketplace.”
Richard Adams, head of EMEA for American Century Investments, added: “Avantis Investors offers core building blocks for an investor’s allocation.
“More and more, the clients and prospects we speak with are interested in Avantis, so we are thrilled to have these available for clients to access.”
The move sees American Century become just the latest US asset manager to enter Europe after Janus Henderson acquired fixed income specialist Tabula Investment Management in April and Pacer ETFs debuted three ETFs a month later.
Avantis Investors currently boasts $54bn assets under management (AUM) across 28 products in the US in little over five years since coming to market.
