FRANCE/EUROPE – Crédit Lyonnais Asset Management (CLAM) and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) have launched two new exchange traded funds (ETFs), the SPDR Europe 350 and the SPDR Euro on NextTrack, the ETF platform at Euronext in Paris.

The new funds are the first to be launched since CLAM and S&P entered into a strategic partnership last October to develop and sell ETFs to institutional and retail investors in the European market under S&P’s SPDR brand. They are domiciled in Ireland as coordinated open-ended investment vehicles but targeted at both institutional and retail investors across Europe.

The funds are already registered for sale in France and Ireland and are pending registration in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

A spokeswoman for Crédit Lyonnais says that the launch is the first in a series of range of European ETFs based on sector, style and geography that will track S&P’s European indices. “There are definitely other ETF products being researched and developed but we haven’t set any launch dates yet,” she says.

AIB/BNY Fund Management and AIB/BNY Trust Company will respectively handle the administration and custody of the new and any future funds, whilst CLAM will team up with Merrill Lynch as market makers.

The partnership between CLAM and S&P was developed to allow S&P to expand into the European market following the success of its US SPDR range, of which there are now eleven representing some US$38bn (€44bn).

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