State Street’s (NYSE: STT) State Street Global Advisors, the second-largest U.S. ETF issuer, and asset management giant MFS Investment Management have partnered on three new actively managed exchange traded funds.
This marks the first foray in the ETF space for Boston-based MFS. At the end of last year, the firm had nearly $413 billion in assets under management and at the end of 2012, the company was the 27th-largest U.S.-based money managed and the 14th-largest mutual fund manager in the country. The company’s line of Meridian funds includes 30 mutual funds.
The ETFs included in the SSgA/MFS partnership are the SPDR MFS Systematic Core Equity ETF (NYSEArc: SYE), SPDR MFS Systematic Value ETF (NYSEArca: SYV) and the SPDR MFS Systematic Growth ETF (NYSEArca: SYG). All three charge 0.6% per year, reasonable among actively managed ETFs.
SYE is benchmarked to the S&P 500 while SYV and SYG are benchmarked to the Russell 1000 Value and Russell 1000 Growth Indices, respectively. The selection process behind the ETFs is combination of fundamental and quantitative research, courtesy of MFS.