Neuberger Berman Plans Its First ETFs
The 82-year-old investment firm joins a growing list of established asset managers moving into the active ETF market.
Neuberger Berman, a private investment management firm founded in 1939, plans on entering the exchange-traded fund universe, joining a growing number of asset managers offering active ETFs for the first time.
The $400-billion-plus asset manager has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch three active ETFs, all targeting future-focused themes that are currently included in the firm’s investment strategies.
The three ETFs are the Neuberger Berman Carbon Transition Infrastructure ETF, the Neuberger Berman Disrupters ETF and the Neuberger Berman Next Generation Connected Consumer ETF.
The carbon transition infrastructure ETF will invest in companies with exposure to infrastructure that will be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or will enable other companies to do so.
The disrupters fund will invest in companies that either disrupt existing markets or create new ones, such as markets focused on autonomous driving, cloud computing or gene therapy, and the Next Generation Consumer Connect ETF will invest in companies the portfolio managers view as potential beneficiaries of the growing economic power of Generations Y and Z.
All three ETFs can invest in U.S. and non-U.S. securities, according to the SEC filing, which comes 11 years after the firm first filed what was essentially a placeholder application notifying the SEC of its intent to trade active ETFs without specifying any specific fund.
Trading symbols and expense ratios of the planned ETFs were not disclosed in the SEC filing.
Neuberger’s application filing comes in the same year that Schwab, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Nuveen and Putnam launched their first active ETFs. All but the DFA funds are semi-transparent, meaning they don’t disclose their actual investment holdings on a daily basis.