LSE – Assets at HANetf hit $2 billion | ETF Strategy

Assets under management at HANetf, Europe’s leading white-label ETP issuer, have topped $2 billion, just two months after the firm hit the $1bn mark.

The milestone represents a significant achievement for the London-headquartered outfit which is led by Co-founders and Co-CEOs Hector McNeil and Nik Bienkowski.

McNeil and Bienkowski are long-standing business partners and have been active in the European ETP market since its genesis.

The pair were Managing Partners at ETF Securities (since broken up with the bulk of operations acquired by WisdomTree) and were instrumental in growing assets under management at the firm from $50 million to $22bn by the time they left in autumn 2010.

In the period after ETF Securities, the pair founded Boost ETP which eventually morphed into WisdomTree Europe following investment from the US firm. The pair’s departure from WisdomTree Europe was announced in May 2016.

HANetf was founded in 2017 and became operational in 2018. Its first product was the EMQQ Emerging Market Internet and Ecommerce UCITS ETF (EMQQ LN) which debuted on the London Stock Exchange in October 2018. Having listed with $2m in seed capital, assets in the fund now stand at an impressive $393m. It has been one of the best-performing emerging market strategies of the past 18 months.

But the firm’s real success story – and the largest contributor to its AUM figure – is the BTCetc Bitcoin Exchange Traded Crypto ETP. Listed on Xetra (BTCE GY) and SIX Swiss Exchange (BTCE SW) and brought to market in partnership with ETC Group, BTCE became the first directly backed bitcoin ETP to be centrally cleared. Having launched with modest seed capital, assets invested in the product now stand at a very healthy $943m. (Of course, this is thanks in no small part to the 400%-plus gain in the price of bitcoin since the product hit the trading floor).

Many of the company’s other products are also gaining notable traction. Products such as the HAN-GINS Tech Megatrend Equal Weight UCITS ETF (ITEK LN). This fund has grown from $14m in assets under management six months ago to $112m now.

Commenting on the milestone, Hector McNeil said: “We are extremely happy to have broken through the $2bn AUM mark so soon after hitting $1bn in December 2020. This is a fantastic achievement given the fact that HANetf only listed its first product just over two years ago.

“I think it really comes down to having a great team and differentiated and highly innovative products. Whether it’s Europe’s first medical cannabis ETF, the first European gold ETC backed by a sovereign mint, the first central-counterparty-cleared bitcoin ETP, or Europe’s first cloud ETF and many more landmarks, HANetf really does prove that it does things differently.

“The challenge now is to keep this up. All I would say is, watch this space! 2021 is going to be a very exciting year for HANetf and the European ETF market.”