US-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) company WisdomTree is aiming to expand in Europe with a deal to take majority ownership of Boost, an ETF firm founded by two former employees of ETF Securities.
WisdomTree will inject $20 million (€15 million) to fund expansion of the company, which will be renamed WisdomTree Europe and 75%-owned by the US firm.
“As the second largest ETP [exchange-traded product] market after the US, Europe is a strategically important market and is the next natural step given our stage of development,” says Jonathan Steinberg, WisdomTree chief executive. “Europe will represent our most significant international effort to date, and we are pleased to enter this market with an accomplished team.”
Hector McNeil and Nik Bienkowski, who founded Boost in 2011, will be co-chief executives of WisdomTree Europe.
Boost has developed a reputation for short and leverage ETPs and said at the end of last year that it had exceeded $50 million in assets under management.
WisdomTree has $34 billion under management across 61 ETFs and say it is the only publicly traded asset manager focused purely on ETFs.
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