Riemer & Doyle, K&L Gates
US vs. European ETF Regulation Explained
Keri Riemer and Hazel Doyle are attorneys at K&L Gates, a full-service global law firm. Keri started in general corporate law, then moved into Investment Company Act of 1940 work and never looked back. She spent time in-house at JP Morgan Asset Management and at the SEC in the Division of Investment Management's chief counsel office before joining K&L Gates. Hazel is Irish, based in K&L Gates' Dublin office, and entered the ETF world working at Bank of Ireland Securities Services, which was later acquired by Northern Trust. Her first ETF was Source, which was subsequently acquired by Invesco in 2017.
On this episode, the first live in-person interview on Behind the Ticker, Keri and Hazel talk with Brad about the legal process of getting an ETF to market in the US and Europe, the timeline and costs involved, and how the regulatory frameworks differ on each side of the Atlantic.
Getting an ETF to Market in the US
Keri walks through the legal process step by step. The first decision: are you forming your own complex (your own trust with your own board) or joining an existing series trust (white-label platform)? If you're forming your own complex, you need to set up everything from scratch: trust formation, board appointment, all the governing documents. Then you file a registration statement with the SEC. For a plain-vanilla, fully transparent ETF that doesn't need exemptive relief (which is the case for most ETFs since the SEC's ETF Rule in 2019), the process takes roughly two to three months if you're joining an existing trust, or three to five months if you're forming your own.
If the ETF uses a non-transparent or semi-transparent structure, you'll need to apply for exemptive relief from the SEC, which adds time and complexity. The same applies for certain exotic strategies that don't fit neatly within the Investment Company Act framework.
Beyond registration, the law firm helps negotiate every service provider agreement: the authorized participant agreements, index licensing agreements (if applicable), custody, transfer agency, and all the operational contracts that keep an ETF running. Keri notes that the law firm should be a "trusted advisor" throughout the ETF's lifecycle, not just at launch. They help with day-to-day compliance questions, SEC exam preparation, product development for new funds, and even M&A if the issuer wants to acquire another fund or convert a mutual fund into an ETF.
The European ETF Market
Hazel provides a window into the European side, which operates under an entirely different regulatory framework. European ETFs are typically structured as UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities), regulated primarily out of Ireland or Luxembourg. Dublin has become the dominant domicile for European ETFs because of its favorable tax treaties, regulatory expertise, and English-speaking legal infrastructure.
The Irish regulatory environment for ETFs has grown dramatically. Hazel notes that when she started, the Irish ETF industry was small. Now Ireland is the largest domicile for European UCITS ETFs by assets. The regulatory process involves filing a prospectus with the Central Bank of Ireland, which reviews the document and the proposed investment strategy. Timing depends on the complexity of the strategy, but straightforward UCITS ETFs can be approved in a matter of weeks once the documentation is in order.
One of the biggest differences from the US: UCITS funds can be "passported" across all EU member states, meaning a single fund domiciled in Ireland can be sold to investors in Germany, France, Italy, and every other EU country without needing separate registrations. This makes Dublin a natural base for issuers looking to access the entire European market with a single product.
US Issuers Expanding into Europe
Both Keri and Hazel highlight a growing trend: US ETF issuers are looking to expand into Europe, and vice versa. The collaboration between K&L Gates' US and Dublin offices reflects this convergence. For a US issuer, launching a UCITS ETF in Ireland opens access to all of Europe plus significant markets in Asia and Latin America that accept UCITS funds. The process involves setting up a new legal entity in Ireland (or adding a sub-fund to an existing UCITS umbrella), appointing local directors and service providers, and navigating the Central Bank approval process.
Keri notes that the mutual fund-to-ETF conversion trend in the US is also driving some issuers to consider ETF structures for the first time, and once they've gone through the ETF launch process domestically, expanding internationally becomes a natural next step. The current ETF industry globally sits at roughly $11 trillion, with about $8 trillion in the US and the remainder split across Europe, Asia, and other markets. The growth rate outside the US has been accelerating.
Key Takeaways
- Launching a plain-vanilla US ETF takes 2-3 months on an existing series trust, or 3-5 months for a new complex. Non-transparent structures require additional SEC exemptive relief.
- European ETFs are typically UCITS structures domiciled in Ireland, which has become the dominant European ETF domicile due to favorable tax treaties and English-speaking legal infrastructure.
- UCITS passporting allows a single Ireland-domiciled fund to be sold across all EU member states without separate country-by-country registrations.
- Keri's career included time at the SEC's Division of Investment Management, giving her direct insight into how the regulator evaluates ETF applications and conducts exams.
- Global ETF assets reached roughly $11 trillion at the end of 2023, with about $8 trillion in the US and accelerating growth in European and Asian markets.
Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Full Transcript
5,554 wordsMachine transcribed from Brad Roth's conversation with Riemer & Doyle, K&L Gates, with speakers identified automatically. Timestamps link to that moment on YouTube. Lightly cleaned, otherwise unedited.
Welcome to Behind the Ticker. I'm Brad Roth, Chief Investment Officer of Thor Financial Technologies and Portfolio Manager of THLV, the Thor Low Volatility ETF. Behind the Ticker uncovers the inner workings of the ETF industry. We will interview portfolio managers and ETF service providers to dive deep into their work lives and their businesses. We will learn the inner workings of their strategies and what drives them as they continue to grow their company. Many of these individuals are entrepreneurs and will have unique and compelling insights to share as much goes on behind the ticker. Please note, nothing in this show is investment advice and it is meant solely for educational and entertainment purposes only.
Welcome to Behind the Ticker. We bring you our special live from the Exchange ETF conference series. We did a number of interviews live from the lobby of the Exchange ETF conference. If you are in ETFs in any capacity or are thinking about launching ETFs, it is the conference to be at, in my opinion. Such a wonderful time and we are excited to bring our first live in-person interview to all of you with Carrie Reimer and Hazel Doyle from K&L Gates. They are two wonderful attorneys. Carrie is a specialist here in the U.S. We talk all things about getting an ETF to market from a legal perspective and then Hazel is an expert in the European side. The ETF market has been growing steadily over in Europe. So she talks about the nuances and intricacies of getting an ETF to market over
On that side of the pond. So I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Carrie Reimer and Hazel Doyle. Carrie and Hazel, welcome to the show. Thank you, Brad. We're so happy to be here. So as I just, we were talking before, as I just said, this is the first live edition, in-person interview behind the ticker. So it's good to actually talk to somebody face-to-face rather than over the computer.
Yeah. We like being your experimental bunnies. So, okay, we'll see. We'll see how this goes.
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It'll be, it'll be fine. Like, so let's start with your backgrounds, Carrie. So can you tell me a little bit about your background, how you kind of got started in and where the position you are today?
Yes, absolutely. So it's kind of funny. I started off just doing general corporate law for about a year and then never really knew much about this specialty of like the Investment Company Act of 1940 and was asked to work with someone who, he kind of asked me to work with his group. And I never really knew why it was that he asked me to do it. And he said later that he knew that I was detail-oriented and hardworking and that was kind of how he pulled me in. And so I've been doing this ever since then. I won't tell you how long that's been because that's kind of embarrassing, but it's been a little while and I've spent most of my career at law firms. I also spent a few years
In-house at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which was great. And then also spent time at a regulator. And so immediately before joining K&L Gates, which is a law firm I'm at now, I was at the SEC working in the Division of Investment Management's Chief Counsel Office. So that's how I ended up and, started doing ETFs. It's just part of the asset management practice and it's been great.
It's awesome. So Hazel, can you give me a little bit about your background?
Yeah, sure. So thanks for having us. So I might start by saying I'm Irish and I'm part of the K&L Gates Dublin office. So we just opened the Dublin office at the beginning of last year and I joined at the end of last year. So I've kind of done that back to front. But I didn't go down the traditional law school route that you probably, you might do in the States, but a lot of people do law as their traditional kind of degree in Ireland. And then they do law exams and then they become lawyers. But I actually did Irish and geography. So Irish being the Gaelic, the language. So geography and Irish weren't much used to me when I was doing my law exams. But when I was doing them,
So how I kind of got into funds, I was working in Bank of Ireland Security Services. They were later bought by Northern Trust. And I was working on the reception there. And I knew that they had a legal department. And I thought, right, I need to get talking to the lady in the legal department, not knowing what funds were or anything. So I got talking to her in the lift one day. And she said they were looking for a paralegal. And a week later, I had a job as a paralegal in the legal department. And from there, the first ETF I worked on was Source. And they were subsequently bought by Invesco in 2017 when Invesco entered the market. So I onboarded Source in Bank of Ireland.
And then I went to work in Maples and Calder, where I did all Source's work. And then I did a comment for about a year to Source. And again, I won't give the dates like Carrie, because it was a long time ago, but there was about 25 people in the office at the time. So it was quite a small office. And so I've always kind of worked on ETFs. I do all sorts of regulated funds, but ETFs are a big part of the work that I do. And then as I was saying, I joined K&L then because they were kind of growing out their ETF practice. And now we have capabilities kind of in Europe, and we have Australia and the US. So that's kind of...
That's awesome. And it's really exciting for me to have Hazel because I know we're going to talk a little bit later about the growth of ETFs. But what's nice is we're going to have the opportunity to work more together as a lot of US ETFs expand into Europe. So it's really nice for us to be able to do this together as kind of a symbol of the collaboration, I think, between the US and Europe in the ETF world.
Yeah. And we're definitely going to talk about the explosion of the US market in ETFs. We're going to talk about the international explosion in ETFs, but you're both attorneys. So what specifically do attorneys do for those of us who are in the ETF industry? I'm an ETF issuer. I know generally when I ask to start an ETF, a bunch of things happen behind the scenes. So can you kind of talk about the legal process specifically in the US that needs to occur in order to get an ETF to market?
Yeah. No. And it's a really good question. I think for an issuer, for an advisor, thinking about starting an ETF, it's important to have a really good partner that's your law firm. And so you want your law firm to kind of be a trusted advisor. They're the ones who, along with some other service providers, but I think kind of your first point of contact when you're just starting this is probably going to be a law firm. And I think it's helpful to get a firm that has like a deep experience with ETFs or at least investment companies, because they're the ones who are going to walk you through the complexities of the Investment Company Act of 1940, which is the statute that's really going to drive a lot of the portfolio management restrictions or requirements.
It imposes a lot of different requirements on managers that they might not have in another genre, such as a private fund or mutual funds. So law firms like us, we're a full service firm. So we are not only in the asset management practice, but other areas like tax, ERISA, FinTech, other areas that might touch on what an ETF manager might need some input on. So we would help you not only with the formation, the registration, even if you're managing a fully transparent, passively managed ETF, and you don't have to get exemptive relief anymore from the SEC, you still need to get an effective registration statement. So your law firm will help you get that registration statement, get through the whole like SEC approval process. They'll help you
Negotiate your service provider agreements. They'll help you with index provider agreements, licensing agreements, the authorized participant agreements, all of that kind of stuff. To the extent you want to do a conversion or restructuring, if you want to acquire another fund just as a means of growth, they'll help you with all of that M&A process, the negotiations there, kind of getting all of that through any kind of approval process. And then they'll just help you, on a day-to-day basis trying to figure out, I want to make this trade, I want to do this strategy, how does this fit? We got this question. there's always the looming prospect out there of an SEC exam, whether it's just a routine exam or not, your firm will help you through that process,
Whether it's coming up with like responses to just, a general questions that they're asking, or if something, heaven forbid, leads to any kind of like formal inquiry or an enforcement, your firm should be able to help you with that. So really, I like to think of law firms as like a very trusted advisor, a good partner with you as you grow. And also in terms of growth, help you, whether it's like product development or thinking about how you can grow, whether it's saying, hey, there's these other options, like we were saying earlier about US moving into Europe, here's another option for you if you want to grow assets, like there's these and try to help you think about and be a good partner for you in terms of achieving your growth objectives.
So before we get into like the growth of the ETF in the US, and that whole industry has exploded, if I am an asset manager today, and I'm thinking about launching an ETF, and I'm picking up the phone, and I'm calling you about how long do you think it would take me to get something to market? I'm sorry, thinking about chaining an ETF? Yeah, like if I'm thinking about initiating an ETF, and I'm calling you at KNL Gates, I'm starting just thinking about the process. Like how long are we talking about to maybe get something listed and going?
So I think it depends on what route you're going to do. So you could either do if you want to form your own complex, and it's not going to be part of kind of like an already existing serious trust, or like a white label trust, that could be a little longer. So you'll want like you'll be forming all of your documents from scratch. So it could be anything that you also have to go through the registration process, the approval process, could be three to five months, depending, depending on your strategy too. So do you need to get exemptive relief, like because you're not going to be a fully transparent ETF, that too can tack on some time. If however, you're just going to be more of a plain vanilla ETF. And especially if you're going to do just become a series of an
Existing series trust, then it's, then it's much faster, because you don't have to go through, you don't have to jump through all the hoops. So then it could be closer to like two to three months.
Yeah. And the reason I ask is because right into the growth of the ETF industry, we know, I think one of the big themes this year is going to be a lot of these model portfolio providers or OCIOs creating their own ETF strategies, obviously, to get that tax efficiency. So let's talk about the growth of the ETF industry. It's obviously becoming big business. What do you think is driving that growth? And how are those trends evolving?
Yeah. So, I can speak to, to the US in particular. And, and so, well, globally, I think it's 11 trillion, I think assets and ETFs at the end of 2023. And within the US, I think it's 8 million, 8 trillion assets at the end of 2023. And, part of that, I think, is a reflection of assets going into a select group of ETFs. So if you start an ETF, that's not a guarantee that because it's grown so much, you're automatically going to get like tons of assets from day one. But the benefits that, that ETFs have had since day one, which is tax efficiency, relatively lower costs for investors, that's continued to grow since, since day one, I think
There's been demand for RIAs to offer more ETF products to their clients. We're also seeing growth in the form of conversions where mutual funds are converting, hedge funds might be wanting, might be converting separately managed accounts. So it's exciting, I think, to be part of an industry where there's growth as opposed to slowdown. But at the same time, it's important to not be tricked into thinking, okay, this means success for everybody, because it still is competitive,
It still is a challenging environment. Well, as an issuer, I could speak to the competitiveness of it. it is, it's tough. And I've talked to so many issuers thinking that if we just start or put a strategy out as an ETF, assets are just going to flow in. And really, you're just getting started on launch day. all the work that goes into getting it there is nothing in comparison to actually gathering assets and keeping a sustainable business. And so last question for you, Carrie, as for now, what do people get wrong about starting an ETF? what are the things that they come in with that just, isn't really a reality?
So I don't know if they get it wrong necessarily, as opposed to maybe not realize all of the complexities involved. So first, I think if you're if this is your first registered investment company, understanding that you have to deal with the Investment Company Act of 1940, which is a very different statute. It's not a disclosure statute. It is it's, so that you have to do certain things, it's not okay to do it. And then and then just disclose it and everything's okay. There are certain things that you actually have to do. So sort of understanding that understanding how your investment mandate may have to change compared to what you've been doing in the past in order to comply with with the statute and the rules that the SEC has passed under the statute.
So that's that's part of it. The other thing is the cost. It can be pretty costly. It's not just your legal fees, your other service provider fees, there's exchange fees, there's, there's the listing fees, there's fees associated with the index, there's fees that are going to be associated with running your mandate, you can't just do it on like $5, like you need to have a substantial amount of assets under management in order to do what you're telling people you're going to do. There's market expectation. So, the costs involved, and it's not just startup, it's ongoing, too. So those are some of the things that I think are important to keep in mind. you might say just thinking about what your budget should be,
Oh, and it also kind of depends on the structure, like, are you going to do a serious trust, which might be less expensive, because you already have some infrastructure in play, you don't have to go through the registration statement from scratch, that might help bring your costs down a little bit. Also, if you're going to do the type of ETF that doesn't require exemptive relief, that too can try to keep your costs down. But I think just generally speaking, the budget you might want to think about is like $1.5 to $5 million, just in terms of like getting going and having some longevity. So that might be something that people don't fully appreciate when they're thinking about it, especially because you hear all this stuff about how there's so much growth and
Assets coming in, and it's eager to think that, it's just going to happen and to kind of lose sight of that. The other thing is the competition. There's so much competition. And part of the reasons why investors like it is because they tend to be lower costs than other types of options. But that then means lower advisory fees. And also, because of the competition, a lot of advisors are entering into expense limitation agreements, where they're agreeing to either waive part of their fees or reimburse fund for fund expenses to try to maintain competition with other funds. The marketing aspect of it, you're really going to have to let people know that you're out there having relationships with your authorized, with people that are able to kind of go in and out,
The APs, the market makers. So I think kind of understanding that sort of overlay is important to think about before you actually just like jump right into it. If you're used to managing private funds, it's going to be a bit of a different beast. It's doable, especially if you have the right partners, if you have a good, like I mentioned, like you have a good law firm behind you, if you have good service providers, there's people, they do this all day long. And this is the only thing they do. So they should be able to help you kind of get a hold of all of that. But, but you do want to be prepared that this is something you're going to have to
Undertake. Yeah, absolutely. And you don't realize, you need to have a runway of ongoing expense to be able to carry this thing forward. Because if you're only going to give yourself six months or a year, it's going to take three to five years to even get your name out there to start attracting assets. So I agree with you that, it's very important to make sure you understand the cost, the expense and everything here. So at this point, I'm going to bring Hazel into the conversation. I'm very excited to talk to you. it's exciting to hear the growth and popularity of the international market. So our listeners probably aren't familiar with what's going on in Europe and the ETF space. So I'm excited for them to get to hear from you. So can you talk
About the ETF market as a whole in Europe? Yeah, sure. And so ETFs have been around in Europe for since 2020, since 20, sorry, 2000. Sorry. The first ETFs were launched by Merrill Lynch on the Deutsche Borsa. And ETFs kind of really started to take off, say probably from 20 to from 2008 in terms of AUM. At the moment, there is about 1.5 trillion under management in Europe. And so while we're small compared to the US, we're catching up. I think Carrie said there's what, 8 trillion under management in the US. So we're getting there. And Ireland actually is the largest domicile for ETFs in Europe. We surpassed the 1 trillion mark this summer. So we're really excited about that.
Luxembourg kind of follows behind us with about 300 million under management. And then the rest of Europe is the remaining kind of assets. And in terms of like market trends and what we see in the regulatory space, we kind of do look a lot back to the US to see what's happening in the US and trends. They might not come kind of within like one, two, three months. It could be five years before the trends kind of pass over. So central bank kind of look to what the SEC is doing on the regulatory side. And then managers that are in Ireland look to see what trends are coming out from the US on that side. I don't think we'll be seeing a spot Bitcoin ETF anytime soon in Europe,
But watch the space for that. And then the trends that we are seeing are kind of like fixed income, seeing a lot of that everywhere. And thematic ETFs kind of more on the AI side might be coming out now because that's quite trendy at the moment. And then we're seeing a lot of ESG as well. That's obviously big in Europe. So a lot of managers are launching as they Article 8, maybe not so much Article 9 at the moment, but a lot of Article 8 funds kind of coming out. And that kind of just really depends on your investor base and what your investors are looking for. Are they looking for that kind of SFDR overlay on the funds? And then traditional passive equity funds, they're still big. And so we can't rule them out. They're obviously
The biggest launches that are kind of happening and then everything else falls into the other spaces. And then one of the things that is quite topical is whether people are launching active funds or passive funds. So I think in the US, you're kind of launching a lot of active funds, but again, still passive funds being really, really big. So in Ireland, you're required to publish your full transparency of your holdings. So all of your holdings need to be published on a daily basis. So managers were quite scared of that initially, I think, and they thought people were going to steal their secret sauce. But I think managers are kind of getting over that now. And we're seeing the likes of Dimensional. They're obviously publishing all of their holdings and bigger managers like AXA
And Franklin Templeton are publishing their holdings in Ireland as well. So I think there's kind of a bit of a move away from passive, but obviously passive are still the biggest. And then...
Yeah. So if I'm a US-based issuer and I'm thinking about breaking into the European market, I want to get an ETF launch there, how would a US issuer legally... How would they get that done?
So that's a question we get asked a lot. So a lot of US issuers will think their strategy in the US has been really, really successful. And they think, okay, I want to move this into Europe. But you have to think first, will that strategy work in Europe? Is that what the investors in Europe want? And also, does it work from a regulatory perspective? Because obviously, in Ireland, most ETFs are launched as USITs, which are quite regulated products. So you need to see if they will fit within the investment limits, the investment restrictions, the borrowing and leverage limits within those. So it might not always work to directly move your strategy in, but you might be able to move parts of the strategy in if you like. And if you're
Looking at that, you're kind of firstly looking at your market entry options. So what are you going to do? Are you going to build your own? Are you going to buy? Or are you going to rent? So probably similar to the US. We don't have as many white label platforms in Ireland. So I think you have a lot of those in the US. And then the considerations, obviously, for each of those three are like cost, speed to market, do you have capital market capabilities? Or are you going to rent them from somewhere else? Your distribution strategy, and how much control you want as well. Because obviously, if you're not building your own, you're relying on the service providers that your white label has picked or the
Directors that they have put in place. And then you also need to think of the type of vehicle that you're going to have. So in Ireland, since 2015, most of our vehicles are launched as ICAVs. So Irish Collective Asset Management Vehicles, another acronym for everyone.
This whole industry is acronym soup. We were having dinner last night, and I was having a conversation with a trader. And he said, I talked to somebody on the phone the other day and just said like nine letters in a row. And he understood me and it didn't make any sense. So go ahead, please.
I'll throw another one in there for you. I have lots of them. And so the ICAV is a dedicated corporate vehicle that was set up for specifically with investment funds in mind. So it's like an investment fund legislation. It's worked really, really well since 2015. And it can be set up as standalone, or I can set up as an umbrella structure. So having different like sub funds with different investment objectives and policies, different share classes sitting under it. And each of those have segregated liability. So the assets from one can't be obviously taken by the other. So they're your kind of structures. And then service providers. So again, a lot of similarities between Ireland and the US. So but the main difference being on the service
Provider side is you're required to appoint a management company. So an Irish or sorry, an EU management company, and they're responsible for the day to day management of the fund. So while you're the promoter coming in, and it's your fund, and you're going to be the investment manager, you still need to appoint this company, and then they will appoint you as the investment manager. So that's kind of something that's hard to kind of think you're giving up your everything to this company. They're responsible for the for the risk and the portfolio management, but they delegate the portfolio management to the investment manager. And so that's probably the main the main difference on the service provider side and everything else is kind of, your market makers, your APs,
Your depository, or your administrator. So that's a that's a whistle top stop tour.
So, it sounds complex. So what additional complexities, launching internationally over top of US do you have over there?
So one of the biggest things is probably on the distribution side. And Ireland has, sorry, not Ireland, the Europe has 25 plus exchanges. And so if you're thinking about distribution, you're kind of thinking, okay, where am I going to sell these products? Who am I going to sell them to? Am I launching on three, four exchanges in across Europe? You might do Deutsche Borsa, you might do Borsa Italiana, and then you might do the London stock exchange. Each of those stock exchanges have their own rules. Some of them have different currencies, there's language requirements. So it's a bit fragmented in Ireland and across Europe in terms in terms of that. So that's probably one of them, one of the biggest things that people that people think of. And then what type of salespeople you're going to
Have? Are they going to be on the ground in those countries? Or are you going to sell through kind of like a distribution kind of platform, like all funds or something like that? So like, there's a lot of cost obviously involved in that. That's one of the biggest ones. And then just kind
Of understanding, I suppose, yeah, the market. Yeah. Well, I did. I saw a matrix one time of the, the US exchanges versus European exchanges. And it's kind of a cobweb of difficulty.
Yeah. And sorry, I might add, we've no consolidated tape in Europe either.
Yeah. It's definitely a little bit more confusing. So last question. Well, second to last question for you. What does growing a fund and compliance look like in Europe versus the US?
You need to obviously think of the USITS overlay. So you're going to be subject to the USITS regulations. USITS are highly regulated investment products. You have portfolio, we're saying about your portfolio transparency requirements. We've got the benchmark regulations. So benchmark administrators are subject to make sure that their indexes are in compliant with certain rules. So if you're bringing, you want to use an index that's in the US, you need to think whether you can use that index kind of in Europe or else you have to use an EU benchmark for your comparative purposes, et cetera, et cetera. Then if you are using, so obviously you've got active funds and you've got your passive funds.
So if you are using, if you're a passive fund and you're using an index, that index needs to be also in compliance with certain exposures to certain companies. So we've got our counterparty exposure limits. So you need to be aware of those as well. And then, yeah, that's, they're probably the main, the main thing.
Yeah. So before I let you both go, this question's for both of you. Hazel, since you have the mic, I'll pose it to you first. You see a lot of issuers, a lot of people trying to launch funds. What separates those from being successful and getting a launch out there and having longevity versus kind of fizzling out in the first 24 months?
Yeah. So there's like, there's a lot of new issuers coming to the market. And as Kerry was saying, it's not as easy as just thinking, this will work because it's working for everybody else. So I think what we're seeing as people who are innovative, so thinking a little bit outside the box, I know that's easier, that's easier said than done. Everyone wants to think outside the box. But in terms of thinking in terms of your distribution strategy, funds in Europe are predominantly sold to institutional investors. So there's not a huge retail base, but I think that is going to change over time. So how are you going to manage that distribution? Germany is going to be a big market for that. Educating investors as well on ETFs. So if retail investors are going to be
Coming into the European space, educating those retail investors, because people are buying on their phone now and using other sources. And yeah, so I think the real winner is just those who innovate, differentiate themselves, and then obviously have super returns. Yeah. Kerry, anything to add? Thank you, Hazel. No, just a couple of things, my observations and my own experience. I think having patience, especially from the get-go, pays off. And trying to like think at the very beginning to do a lot of legwork in the beginning before you even start to like draft documents might will really come in handy and save time in the long run. I think, knowing that you have a window of, let's say, three months just to get SEC approval for your
New product, trying to be patient through that, not get frustrated. I think just mentally you'll be better off. But I agree with Hazel. trying to do something that's different, that separates you, having the relationships, having the support, the institutional support, having a relationship to brokers with people who are going to sell the product. I think all of that really, that pays off. But it's, it's hard. It's a competitive, it's a competitive industry. So anything you can do to kind of differentiate yourself, but also know that it might take time will, will help.
So first of all, thank you both for doing this.
Oh, Brad, we were so excited. Yeah, this is fun. It's our first podcast.
Now you're officially on Spotify and you can listen to yourself in the car.
We're going to be signing autographs for the rest of the day.
So where can people learn more about you, Carrie? And where can, they learn about the services at K&L Gates?
Oh, sure. So we have a website, which I think is klgates.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I also have Instagram where you can follow me traveling, which is my handles lightpackerfrequenttraveler. But that's, that's, that's not ETF related. Yeah, similarly, I think we have a, we've quite active ETF, sorry, LinkedIn accounts, both at K&L and our own, our own accounts. So yeah, you'll, you'll find, you'll find a lot of information about us there as well.
Well, again, thank you both very, very much. And we are down here in exchange. So I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Miami. Thanks. Bye.
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