From helping to bring gold investing to the masses to devising ETFs for short-selling hedge funds, Hector McNeil has been at the vanguard of the passive revolution for the past 20 years.
Now, the 50-year old Yorkshireman is taking on the likes of BlackRock Inc. to shake up the industry in Europe. McNeil wants to fast-track the creation of passive products for wannabe issuers lacking in-house expertise or the stomach for execution risk through his firm HANetf, a white-label provider.
And he has a high-profile backer: the venture-capital arm of Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management LP. A spokesman for the firm confirmed the investment, but declined to comment further.
On Friday, McNeil is spearheading the firm’s first offering in Europe, the EMQQ Emerging Markets and Ecommerce UCITS ETF, modeled on a $360 million U.S. fund that tracks an index developed by Big Tree Capital.
Big Ambition
“We can have a fund in the market in 12 weeks,” said McNeil in an interview in London. “We feel the next wave of issuance will be asset managers who don’t necessarily want to create a full ETF business to go up against iShares.”
HANetf is courting U.S. and Asian issuers that have yet to venture into Europe, and home-grown asset managers that lack passive experience.
McNeil says it’s an experiment that could unleash ETFs of all stripes, judging from action across the Atlantic. White-label launches there are on a tear, helping to spur exotic products that track the fortunes of everything from pot growers and drones to artificial intelligence.
Like the U.S., Europe is dominated by BlackRock, intimidating smaller players that want to ride the boom. Globally, the industry is set to grow by $1 trillion this year.
Navigating multiple countries, languages and tax systems, as well as the administrative burden of MiFID II rules that require every ETF transaction to be reported, favors large issuers that can offer lower-cost products.
To gain a foothold in the ever-consolidating market, a white-label solution should prove critical in helping asset managers compete, according to McNeil.