Deutsche Börse: XTF Established As Segment For Exchange-Traded Funds - Deutsche Börse Is European Market Leader

Exchange-traded funds have become an established feature of the German capital market. This was the positive interim assessment by Deutsche Börse on Thursday, just about one year after launching its XTF segment for exchange-traded funds. The new products are recording monthly turnover of some 2 billion euros in the meantime, and achieving roughly 50 percent of the volume traded in all NEMAX 50 stocks. With a market share of some 65 percent, Deutsche Börse is the market leader in exchange-traded funds in Europe. "Deutsche Börse's Xetra trading platform, with its Europe-wide distribution, is the basis on which XTF will further expand its position as the leading segment for exchange-traded funds in Europe," as Volker Potthoff put it, the officer responsible for XTF on the Deutsche Börse Executive Board. In March, the index fund on the DAX and the two index funds on the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 were among the 40 most active issues on Xetra.

Right on time for the segment's first anniversary, another product is coming onto the market, which is based on SMI, the Swiss blue-chip index, the first such product in Deutsche Börse's XTF segment to be based on a foreign country index. There are now 11 actively managed funds and six index funds listed in Deutsche Börse's XTF segment. Further products on indices of Deutsche Börse and the pan-European family of Dow Jones STOXX indices are to follow by the middle of the year, as Deutsche Börse indicated. Deutsche Börse introduced exchange-traded funds on April 11, 2000, the first European exchange to do so.

Through XTF, investors can trade exchange-traded index funds and actively managed equity funds quickly and easily, like shares. There are no loads for the purchase of fund shares through the exchange; all that the investor has to pay are the usual transaction costs for the purchase and sale of securities. The shares can be bought by investors through any bank. Roughly 98 percent of the turnover in fund products is posted through Xetra. This means that all of the essential trading parameters from equities trading are also available in XTF. These include continuous trading, auctions, a minimum lot of one fund share as well as Designated Sponsors who provide for liquidity.