Systemic risk unease puts exotic ETFs in regulators’ sights

Regulatory criticism of synthetic and levered ETFs might force asset managers out of these products altogether. The bigger risk is that it tarnishes the entire trillion-dollar ETF industry. Louise Bowman reports.

WHEN UK INVESTMENT manager Evercore Pan-Asset announced at the end of June that it planned to remove synthetic exchange traded funds from most of its portfolios it seemed that the lingering disquiet in this part of the ETF market might be about to come to a head. Having enjoyed rampant growth over the past decade, the ETF market found itself the target of an IMF Financial Stability Board paper published in April that raised concerns about the risk that these supposedly vanilla instruments embody.

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