Vanguard looks to boost index trackers

5 March 2010 8:00 am | By Chris Salih

Vanguard is looking to add to its UK range of index trackers with the launch of both an index linked bond and real estate property fund.

Vanguard head of retail sales Nick Blake says the company has funds in both those areas in the US and it is something that they are keen to bring across to the UK.

Blake says the group has been looking at a real estate property fund for a while but finding an appropriate index to track is difficult.

He says: “Vanguard is known for going for well diversified markets with a broad, well known index. The Reit market is still developing with numerous indices and the first trick of being a good manager is picking a strong index.

“For index-linked bonds, it is a case of doing them successfully at the right cost. Can we buy all the assets we want to buy? In this market in particular, we need to access a number of the underlying holdings which tend to be held by the likes of life firms and those running annuity books for the longer term, making it hard to track the index.”

Vanguard has £500m of assets across its nine equity funds and three bond funds which laun-ched in June 2009.

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