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Morgan Stanley and Amundi unveil UCITS ETFs based on ERI Scientific Beta’s smart beta index… Morgan Stanley announces launch of MS Lynx UCITS fund…

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Morgan Stanley this week announced the launch of a new ETF, the MS Scientific Beta Global Equity Factors UCITS ETF on its FundLogic platform.

The ETF provides exposure to the Scientific Beta Developed Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Equal-Weight Index and is the first ETF to be launched between Morgan Stanley and ERI Scientific Beta. Its inclusion on the FundLogic platform demonstrates the depth of interest in smart beta products that continues to build among institutional investors.
 
“We are pleased to provide UCITS investors with access to the Scientific Beta Developed Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Equal-Weight Index. The Index was devised by ERI Scientific Beta, which is an innovative smart beta index provider and an affiliate of the EDHEC-Risk Institute”, said Hitendra Varsani, Head of the Quantitative and Derivative Strategies team at Morgan Stanley. He added: “The ETF gives investors exposure to developed market equities and combines smart beta investing and risk factor investing into a single strategy.”
 
Commenting on the launch, Professor Noël Amenc, Director of EDHEC-Risk Institute and CEO of ERI Scientific Beta, said: “We are excited to partner with Morgan Stanley in providing its institutional clients with transparent smart-beta index replication using a market-leading fund platform. Through Morgan Stanley’s FundLogic platform, UCITS ETF investors can get exposure to our Strategy in a very efficient way.”
 
In addition to the ETF, Morgan Stanley has the capability to provide a range of investment vehicles for its clients to replicate the performance of Scientific Beta indices, including funds, swaps, options, and structured products.
 
Coincidentally, this week Amundi also announced that it too had launched a similar ETF on NYSE Euronext Paris to provide investors with exposure to the Scientific Beta Developed Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy ERC strategy index.
 
Amundi has an existing range of single “Smart Beta” strategies which can be used by investors as “allocation bricks” according to their market outlook: Minimum Volatility, Mid Cap, Small Cap, Growth, Value and High Dividend.
 
The new ETF offers long-term investors a robust and transparent solution which, by combining different developed market global equities strategies, allows them to go one step further. The Scientific Beta Index created by EDHEC-Risk aims to outperform the equivalent market capitalization weighted index by blending four main risk factors (value, size, low volatility and momentum) with five popular smart beta diversification strategies.
 
Valérie Baudson, Global Head of ETF and Indexing at Amundi, commented: “This first Multi Smart Beta ETF launch on Euronext again demonstrates our commitment to innovation at the core of our product development strategy. This also marks a major step in our ‘Smart Beta’ ETF and indexing solutions offering.”
 
It has certainly been a productive week for Morgan Stanley. In other news, the US bank announced that it has launched the MS Lynx UCITS Fund under its FundLogic Alternatives plc umbrella in Dublin.
 
The new fund gives investors exposure to the Lynx Programme and is now the fifth CTA strategy to be made available in a UCITS format on the platform. Lynx is a part of Brummer & Partners Group in Stockholm and runs a diversified medium-term managed futures programme.
 
“We are proud to provide UCITS investors with access to the Lynx Programme, which was established in 2000,” said Stephane Berthet, Head of the FundLogic Alternatives Platform at Morgan Stanley.
 
Berthet added: “Their [Lynx] success can be attributed to their systematic approach, with a core in trend following applied across a broadly diversified portfolio of markets. The Lynx Programme also benefits from a more diversified portfolio of trading systems than is customary in the managed futures industry, where contrarian, inter-market and short-term models help achieve better risk-adjusted returns and enhance performance in a non-trending market environment.”
 
Svante Bergström, CEO and founding partner of Lynx said: “We are excited to work with Morgan Stanley. Through their FundLogic platform, UCITS investors can get exposure to our trading strategy in a very efficient way.”

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