According to Detlef Glow—Lipper’s Head of EMEA Research, and Christoph Karg—Content Management Funds EMEA at Thomson Reuters Lipper, at the end of Q2 2016, equity funds dominated the scene with a market share of 37% of the funds available for sale in Europe, followed by mixed-asset funds (28%), bond funds (21%), and money market funds (3%). The remaining 11% of “other” funds were real estate funds, commodity funds, guaranteed funds, and funds of hedge funds.
At the end of June 2016 there were 31,815 mutual funds registered for sale in Europe. For Q2 2016 a total of 689 funds (437 liquidations and 252 mergers) were withdrawn from the market, while only 463 new products were launched. However, the Thomson Reuters’ professionals expect that following the “Brexit” vote and its possible implications for fund distribution in Europe, “the number of products to rise over the course of the next two years. Investment managers based in the United Kingdom will ensure their access to the continental European market with the launch of products that are domiciled in the EU, while EU-based asset managers may start to launch funds that are domiciled in the U.K. The first scenario is expected to lead to an even higher dominance of Luxembourg and Ireland as international fund hubs in Europe, while the latter may drive up the number of products domiciled in the U.K.”
Additionally, they believe that market and fund-flow trends will impact the activity of the European fund promoters in one or another direction, “since these trends normally lead to the launch of new products or, contrarily, to the closure of existing products that have fallen out of favor with investors. With the increasing pressure on profitability, at least for bank-or insurance-owned asset managers, fund promoters will also further clean up their product ranges to become more efficient in an environment of increasing costs from the permanently increasing regulatory demands.”
For Q2, Luxembourg continued to dominate the fund market in Europe, hosting 9,109 funds, followed by France, where 4,452 funds were domiciled.
You can read the full report on the following link.