The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relative to wealth advisors and their clients.

Franklin Templeton
Franklin Templeton has just launched its new Franklin FTSE Japan UCITS exchange-traded fund (ETF). The offering is the first Japan index tracking ETF in the Franklin Templeton ETF range and brings the total number of its indexed ETFs to 22.

The Franklin FTSE Japan UCITS ETF invests in large and mid-capitalisation stocks in Japan, the firm said in a statement. It tracks the performance of the FTSE Japan Index – NR (Net Return), a market-capitalisation weighted index representing the performance of large and mid-cap companies in Japan aiming to capture 90 per cent of the investable Japanese equity market universe.

“The Japanese equity market is the second largest equity market in Asia-Pacific and the largest developed market in the region. Following decades of deflationary tendencies, Japan’s central bank recently stated it sees a virtuous cycle between wages and prices intensifying, which should further help to bolster consumption and investments,” Caroline Baron, head of ETF distribution at EMEA, Franklin Templeton, said. “The country’s strong position on the global technology supply chain, including semiconductors, along with a renewed focus on corporate governance and shareholder value should also bode well for the domestic equity market.”

The Franklin FTSE Japan UCITS ETF will list on the Deutsche Börse Xetra (XETRA) on 30 July 2024, London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Euronext Amsterdam on 31 July 2024, and the Borsa Italiana on 4 September 2024. It is registered in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

It will be managed by Dina Ting, head of global index portfolio management, and Lorenzo Crosato, ETF portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton, who have more than three decades of experience in the asset management industry and extensive track records in managing ETF strategies.