State Street Global Advisors has registered 17 new exchange-traded funds with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This will expand its current roster of 25 ETFs, 12 of which it has rolled out since November.
State Street's recent push to expand its ETF lineup is driven by a desire to boost its market share in the industry it pioneered in 1993 with the first ETF to come to market, the SPDR 500 Trust. State Street, which has $85 billion invested in its ETFs and a 28% market share of the $300 billion industry, is runner-up to Barclays Global Investors, the market leader. Barclays has $190 billion in its 102 iShares ETFs and a 63% market share.
State Street's new ETFs are all narrow-niche funds tied to specific sectors, including aerospace and defense, building and construction, computer hardware and software, healthcare equipment and services, outsourcing and IT consulting, and regional banking and mortgage financing. Interestingly, unlike State Street's other ETFs, which bear the StreetTracks brand name, these new funds would bear the SPDR designation.
"We looked at the places where products were feasible in terms of having the necessary liquidity and where there was some demand," Gary MacDonald, State Street's marketing director, told Dow Jones.
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