The M&G AAA EUR CLO Active UCITS ETF, which has been launched with €200 million ($229 million) of capital, including €180 million from external investors, provides investors with targeted exposure to European CLOs. 

European CLOs enable exposure to diversified portfolios of senior secured loans to corporate borrowers and can provide attractive income relative to similarly rated assets, while their floating-rate profile is well suited to a volatile interest rate environment.

The launch reflects M&G’s focus on broadening investor access to its active asset management capabilities and long-standing track record across credit markets. The fund, designed for professional investors seeking differentiated fixed income exposure, is listed on the London Stock Exchange, Frankfurt’s Xetra and Milan’s Borsa Italiana.

“Demand for more targeted European CLO exposure is growing, with investors looking for dedicated, pure-play strategies. This launch reflects our focus on expanding access to M&G’s investment capabilities, particularly through ETF structures that offer a liquid and efficient route for investors,” Neil Godfrey, global head of client group, M&G Investments, added.

BlackRock
has launched the iShares World Thematic Rotation Active UCITS ETF (THRW), an actively managed core thematic global equity strategy that seeks to dynamically capture the themes driving markets.

Registered markets include Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. It is listed on Euronext Amsterdam, Xetra.

The fund offers an all-in-one investment solution that aims to handle theme selection, timing, and portfolio management within one allocation. The strategy identifies, ranks, and rotates between short-, medium-, and long-term market themes, regularly updating its 200 to 300 equity holdings to take advantage of growing trends and limit involvement in declining ones.

In the market environment, the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) highlights that global equity returns are becoming increasingly dispersed, shaped by a narrow set of mega forces. Against this backdrop, BII emphasises the growing need for a more active approach, with investors needing to dynamically reposition as market leadership evolves across time horizons. The firm projects that active ETF assets globally will reach $4 trillion by 2030, while systematic strategies’ share of active equity is expected to rise from 11 per cent in 2024 to 15 per cent by 2030.

The strategy uses AI to review around one million financial news stories annually, over 5,000 quarterly earnings calls, and roughly 1,000 thematic baskets and funds. Large language models then methodically transform this raw data into market themes, connecting companies to new cross-industry trends that could influence returns. Each day, a diversified modelling framework evaluates these themes, delivering insights to support active stock selection as part of portfolio optimisation, which strives to balance expected returns, risk, and costs.

Baillie Gifford
, a global investment manager, has launched its Islamic Global Equities Fund. Managed by Tolibjon Tursunov and Saad Malik, the fund offers Muslim investors access to a high conviction portfolio of growth companies aligned with Shariah principles.

It is a Dublin-domiciled UCITS fund, approved for sale in the UK. “There are an estimated four million Muslims in the UK – 6 per cent of the population – and around two billion globally, making Islam one of the world's fastest-growing religions. Yet Islamic equity funds account for less than one per cent of the global equity universe,” Baillie Gifford claimed.

Baillie Gifford believes that Muslims are still faced with a lack of good options. The $2.7million fund is built for professional investors and retail savers with a long-term horizon of five years or more. It invests in a focused global portfolio of around 50 of Shariah-compliant growth companies, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics.