Emanuele Bellingeri, Head of iShares Italy at BlackRock, notes that 70% of ETF trades in Italy are done on over-the-counter basis. Institutional investors account for 80% of iShare’s Italy-listed ETF assets.
Deborah Fuhr, managing partner at ETFGI, pointed out that Italian investors were more apt to take on international exposure – none of the top 10 Italy-listed ETFs were linked to domestic equities. Furh also added that retail investors were more engaged with ETFs than other parts of Europe.
“We can see that retail investors are more prominent in the Italian ETF market as average ETF trade sizes on the Borsa Italiana are smaller than on the other main European ETF exchanges such as Deutsche Börse, the London Stock Exchange or NYSE Euronext,” Fuhr added in the FT story.
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Max Chen contributed to this article.