UK lagging behind US on ETFs

Offering a number of advantages over traditional indexed investment funds, the exchange traded funds industry has grown to £86bn in the US but failed to repeat that success in the UK

In today's increasingly global marketplace, most innovative financial concepts that originate in the US typically find their way to these shores soon after they have been developed ' and exchange traded funds (ETFs) are no exception. Based on an academic paper written in 1976 and pioneered by Leyland, O'Brien and Rubenstein Associates (LOR) in 1990, ETFs initially emerged as experimental underlying securities for hedge funds. However, the story was not properly set in motion until 1993, when State Street Global Advisers ' the world's second largest indexer after Barclays Global Inve...