Vanguard is closing in on industry leader BlackRock in US exchange traded funds, a $6.6tn competitive battleground for the world’s two largest asset managers.
US ETF assets under Vanguard’s management totalled $1.84tn at the end of August, compared with the $2.21tn run by BlackRock’s iShares ETF unit, according to newly released data. Vanguard led the pack in attracting money into US ETFs in 2021 and is ahead again this year, in August receiving four times as much as BlackRock.
BlackRock has been at the top of the ETF industry since its 2009 purchase of iShares from Barclays, but its rival is fast catching up. While BlackRock’s US ETFs still have 20 per cent more assets than Vanguard’s, they were 50 per cent larger in 2019.