Further evidence of the increasing importance of the German market to European ETF providers came this week with the news from BNP Paribas Asset Management that it is adding to its team in Munich.
The announcement that Florian Schoeps has been appointed as ETF and index solutions sales trader follows on from the news earlier this week that State Street has hired Stefan Kuhn as its new managing director and head of ETFs for the SPDR business in Germany.
Schoeps will report to Claus Hecher, head of business development for Germany, Austria and the German-speaking areas of Switzerland.
Florian joins BNP Paribas from MAEG Munich ERGO where he was a senior relationship manager. Prior to this he worked at Pioneer Investments, also in Munich.
Isabelle Bourcier, head of quantitative and index management within BNP Parisbas' multi-asset, quantitative and solutions investment group, said: "Germany is one of our main markets in Europe, along with France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
"We have considerably strengthened our sales presence and visibility in these markets over the past two years, regularly recruiting new staff members to underpin the sales momentum that we are enjoying with investors in these countries."
There has been an increased focus on Germany and continental Europe this year within the ETF market. In late July, Vanguard launched a new German ETF, the Vanguard DAX UCITS ETF, to mark 30 years since the formation of the Dax index.
This came hot on the heels of the news that Lyxor parent Societe Generale had bought the ETF unit of Commerzbank.
