The ETF giants continued to rake in the majority of flow in 2021 amid a record-breaking year for the European ETF market.
ETFs in Europe saw a record €162bn inflows over the 12 months, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, taking the region’s overall assets under management to just shy of €1.5trn.
As expected, BlackRock dominated proceedings with €69bn inflows over the 12 months, a 42.5% market share. Despite the huge inflows, this was shy of the firm’s 50% market share in 2020.
The world’s largest asset manager’s ETF AUM in Europe now totals €615bn, as at the end of December, as it captured the seismic shift to sustainable investments.
Elsewhere, the battle for number two between DWS and Amundi is certainly on in 2022. The German asset manager saw €17.4bn inflows in 2021, taking its ETF AUM to €155bn.
Meanwhile, the big news in the ETF space last year was Amundi’s €825m acquisition of rival Lyxor for €825m. The combined business saw inflows of €19.9bn which drove its AUM to over €170bn.
How Amundi streamlines the combined range will be crucial in determining how successful it is this year. Highlighting this, 14 different indices are tracked by at least four Amundi or Lyxor ETFs with just these products accounting for almost a third of the firm’s combined assets, as of July last year.
Elsewhere, Vanguard and Invesco had strong years with inflows of €10bn and €9bn, respectively. The former launched its first ESG ETF in Europe, the Vanguard ESG Global All Cap UCITS ETF (V3AA), last March while Invesco has dipped its toes into the crypto space with the launch of the Invesco Physical Bitcoin ETP (BTIC).
State Street Global Advisors and UBS Asset Management rounded off the big players with inflows of €7.7bn and €7.2bn, respectively.
Athanasios Psarofagis, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said: “For the most part, ETF flows have been consistent with market share.
“It is very hard to find a more dominant player in any region than BlackRock is in Europe. The closed deal between Amundi and Lyxor should help increase some competition at the top in 2022.”
A rejuvenated HSBC Asset Management punched above its weight in 2021 with inflows of €3.7bn which takes its AUM to €17.3bn.
The UK asset manager has been very active this year with the launch of its first fixed income ETFs while also restructuring its $103bn passive arm to bring ETF, indexing and systematic ranges under one umbrella.
The firm also expanded its ETF team significantly last year including the appointments of Dominic Clabby as head of ETF strategy from Invesco last March and DWS’s Bhaven Patel as global head of ETF capital markets,ETF Stream revealed in April.
Also notable, was VanEck’s €2.4bn inflows in 2021 which almost doubled its overall ETF AUM to €5.8bn. This included significant demand for Europe’s first semiconductor ETF, the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor UCITS ETF (SMGB), which has gathered $850m AUM since launching in December 2020.
At the other end of the spectrum, WisdomTree was the only major ETF issuer in Europe to suffer outflows with €362m withdrawn over the 12 months. The firm was not helped by waning demand for gold with the WisdomTree Physical Gold ETC (PHGP) recording outflows of $1.4bn in 2021.
Source: Bloomberg Intelligence
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