State Street Investment Management is preparing a major push into Europe’s active ETF market, aiming to launch both in-house strategies and also partner with third-party active shops to co-develop products.
The $5.1trn asset manager is planning offerings in areas such as global equities, small caps and high-dividend stocks, alongside “complementing … existing products with the development of derivative overlays,” Andrew Keegan, head of product, international at State Street Investment Management, told ETF Stream.
Partnerships with third-party active managers, particularly in fixed income, are also in the works. State Street has used this partnership model in the US with Apollo Global Management on a private credit ETF and Bridgewater Associates.
While active ETFs account for just 3% of Europe’s ETF assets, they drew 8% of net inflows in the first half of 2025, with most new entrants launching active products.
Schroders, M&G and Dimensional are also expected to enter the European active ETF market in the coming months.
European defence ETFs tumble on ceasefire hopes
European defence ETFs have fallen in August amid growing speculation of a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war ahead of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The WisdomTree Europe Defence UCITS ETF (WDEF), the continent’s largest in the sector housing $3.4bn AUM, fell 7.2% between 6 and 11 August, while competing strategies such as the Future of European Defence UCITS ETF (ARMY) and the Amundi Stoxx Europe Defense UCITS ETF (DEFS) dropped 6.2% and 5.4%, respectively.
The downturn was augmented by European defence posterchild Rheinmetall’s softer-than-expected half-year results, with Q2 sales of €2.4bn missing forecasts despite a 30% jump in its order backlog to €63.2bn.
The downturn marks a significant shift in the tide. WDEF, ARMY and DEFS have seen stellar returns before August, returning 20%, 31% and 16% respectively since their launches, according to data from justETF.
Crypto ETP providers to list in UK?
Finally, several crypto ETP providers are eyeing UK listings after the Financial Conduct Authority announced it will lift its retail ban on the products from October.
Issuers including VanEck, DWS, HANetf, Deutsche Digital Assets (DDA) and Valour are reassessing their strategies, with some already in discussions about potential launches.
The U-turn from the UK regulator marks a spectacular reversal from 2021 when it warned that crypto ETN investors “should be prepared to lose all their money”.
DDA is also set to be acquired by UK-based digital asset exchange, broker and custodian Archax. The acquisition will mark Archax’s entry into the crypto ETP space, with Archax in turn bringing ‘deep access’ to German, French and Swiss investors looking for tokenised products, an area of the market drawing growing interest in the ETF space.
