FRANCE/EUROPE – Standard & Poor’s and Crédit Lyonnais Asset Management (CLAM) have entered into a partnership to sell exchange traded funds (ETFs) to institutional and retail investors in the European market under S&P’s SPDR brand.

The European ETFs will track the S&P Europe 350 and S&P Euro indices and their sub-components for geographical, sector and style indices.

CLAM says it will introduce its first two SPDRs on NextTrack – the dedicated ETF market segment of Euronext - before the year-end, subject to regulatory and market approval.

AIB/Bank of New York will act as the European SPDR administrator and custodian, while Crédit Lyonnais Securities and Morgan Stanley are set to act as market makers for the funds.

Harold McGraw, chairman of S&P’s parent company The McGraw-Hill Companies, comments: “Given Crédit Lyonnais Asset Management’s strong reputation and pan-European experience, we are confident that the S&P Europe 350 and S&P Euro SPDRs will replicate the success of the S&P 500 SPDR, the world’s largest ETF.”

Growth in the use of exchange traded funds has been dramatic over the last five years.
Since 1997, the world-wide ETF market has increased more than tenfold and in Europe where 43 ETF’s currently trade, assets under management have grown to over e3bn.

At October 1, S&P’s SPDR family of ETFs represented over $31bn in assets under management on the US market.






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