Vanguard has revealed plans to broaden its line-up of exchange-traded funds in Canada, with the launch five new ETFs on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The firm has filed a preliminary prospectus with the Canadian securities regulators for three international equity ETFs and two international bond ETFs. Atul Tiwari, managing director of Vanguard Investments Canada, said: “We are committed to providing investors access to broadly diversified investments, managed by Vanguard’s experienced team of index investment professionals, at an extremely low cost.”

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has confirmed that is evaluating the merits of a potential bid for Russell Investments. LSEG is the owner of FTSE Group, a leading index provider, and is understood to be interested in acquiring Russell primarily for Russell Indexes, the company’s vast indexing business. Russell Indexes is one of the leading providers of indices to the fast-growing exchange-traded funds industry, with more than $150 billion in assets invested in Russell-linked ETFs.

WisdomTree has launched two new funds on the NYSE Arca: the WisdomTree International Hedged Dividend Growth ETF (IHDG), which is designed to provide currency-hedged exposure to dividend-paying stocks of international developed market growth-oriented companies, and the WisdomTree Europe Dividend Growth ETF (EUDG), which is designed to provide exposure to dividend-paying stocks of European developed market growth-oriented companies.

The rise of smart beta products in the exchange-traded funds industry is a credit positive for asset managers with smart-beta focused ETF businesses, according to new report from Moody’s, a credit ratings agency. “The expansion of smart beta will benefit asset managers with businesses centred around smart beta the most,” says Stephen Tu, Vice President, Moody’s. “Invesco’s Powershares franchise, which offers smart beta ETFs, will benefit, as will BlackRock. Guggenheim may also benefit given the majority of its ETFs are based on non-traditional indexing.”

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DeAWM) has unveiled the db X-trackers Solactive Investment Grade Subordinated Debt ETF (SUBD). The NYSE Arca-listed ETF, the first of its kind in the US, is linked to the Solactive Subordinated Bond Index, a rules-based, market value-weighted index designed to track the investment grade, subordinated corporate bond market of US dollar-denominated corporate securities classified as subordinated. Subordinated bonds have the potential to produce higher yields than equivalent unsubordinated bonds and may provide attractive returns to investors capable of taking on additional risk.

Invesco PowerShares, a leading global provider of exchange-traded funds, has announced the launch of the PowerShares Variable Rate Preferred Portfolio ETF (VRP). The NYSE Arca-listed ETF offers income-seeking investors exposure to a portfolio of variable-rate preferred securities. Dan Draper, Invesco PowerShares Managing Director of Global ETFs, said: “We see strong demand for variable-rate preferred securities that offer the potential for high income and less interest rate risk than fixed rate preferred securities in this current market rate environment.”

According to the latest ETP Landscape Report from BlackRock, global ETPs gathered an impressive $33.5 billion in April, making it the best April on record for the industry. Europe was particularly strong. Ursula Marchioni, Head of ETP Research and Equity Strategy for iShares EMEA, said: “Europe-listed ETPs have attracted more assets in the first four months of 2014 than 2013 as a whole, with $20.6bn inflows year to date, or 106% of last year’s total.”

ETF Securities, the exchange-traded products provider and commodities specialist, has entered the competitive world of financial market indexing with the launch of ETFS Indices. Led by Dan Raab, the unit will design and publish liquid and replicable futures-based indices. ETFS Indices’ debut line-up includes two enhanced commodity long-only indices and two commodity long/short indices. The indices are formulated with a goal of having low correlations to traditional asset classes while providing relatively strong reward vs. risk ratios.

Commodities moved back into favour in the first quarter of 2014, according to data from ETF Securities, a leading provider of commodity-focused exchange-traded products (ETPs). Nicholas Brooks, Head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities, said: “Gold ETPs moved strongly back into favour in February and March as investors revised down their highly bullish US growth assumptions and revised up the global risk outlook. Broad commodity ETPs also saw a turn in sentiment, with asset allocators rotating into the asset class as an alternative to overstretched developed market equities.”

Global ETF and ETP assets reached a new record high of $2.45 trillion at the end of Q1 2014, according to ETFGI, a London-based consultancy. Flows into ETFs and ETPs rebounded in March gathering net inflows of $11.0 billion which, when combined with a small positive market performance in the month, helped lifts assets closer towards the psychological $2.5 trillion mark. According to ETFGI, there are now 5,204 ETFs/ETPs, with 10,219 listings, from 222 providers on 59 exchanges globally.