Fund business assaults Deutsche Börse indices | EUROtoday

The largest explosive will be present in paragraph seven of the second press launch that the German fund affiliation BVI despatched out on Tuesday. In addition to glorious business figures for 2025 and the same old pleas for extra funds in retirement provision and fewer regulation, the affiliation, with document belongings below administration of virtually 5 trillion euros, is daring to launch a public assault on Deutsche Börse. Accordingly, the BVI is campaigning for “a European index family” and can be proposing a reputation: European All Shares Index Family, abbreviated EUASIF.

Now there are lots of 1000’s of indices on the earth. MSCI, FTSE and S&P provide international protection. And Europe hasn’t been sleeping on this space both and, with Deutsche-Börse-Gesellschaft Stoxx, is a big index supplier that focuses on Europe and claims to have a broad protection of Europe. 18,000 indices come from Stoxx alone, essentially the most profitable are Euro Stoxx, Stoxx Europe and Dax.

The BVI needs a “face” for the Capital Markets Union and particularly higher visibility for smaller and medium-sized listed firms. “The EUASIF should cover all stocks listed in the EU and enable sub-indices for individual countries, regions and sectors,” it says. Eastern Europe particularly is uncared for within the present indices.

The BVI’s proposal is explosive. The BVI is the voice of the fund business in Germany, whose members additionally embrace the key suppliers of exchange-traded index funds equivalent to Blackrock with the iShares model, DWS with db X-Trackers and Amundi (together with the previous Lyxor). With their ETFs, they’re Stoxx’s largest clients and are clearly aggravated by the index charges of the earlier suppliers. When requested, the key phrase that comes up within the business as a want for the brand new indices is “cost-efficient”. The burden on market members must be minimized. “Positive second-round effects” from the brand new indices are promised, for instance elevated firm listings and new monetary merchandise.

The charges for ETFs on the 600-stock Stoxx 600 at Amundi and db X-Trackers are at the moment seven thousandths per yr, i.e. 0.07 %. Nevertheless, Deutsche Börse’s charges for market knowledge, notably its share costs and for using its indices, have lengthy been a nuisance for a lot of monetary market members. This has thus far been explicitly formulated by firms from the certificates business, equivalent to Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, which seemed for alternate options a couple of years in the past along with the Frankfurt index supplier Solactive and Baader Bank, additionally utilizing the FAZ index, however in the end failed as a result of market energy of the Deutsche Börse. Solactive has however developed properly and established itself as an index supplier, even when it has not but had any success below competitors regulation towards the inventory trade and its place as a market knowledge supplier, which is commonly criticized as being too highly effective.

The BVI is now putting the initiative below the heading of higher financing of the EU financial system. “An EU index family can help keep capital in Europe and direct it here,” says Thomas Richter, chief govt of the BVI. The visibility, comparability and transparency of all listed firms within the EU are to be improved and thus market integrity strengthened.

From the BVI perspective, it could even be good for Europe if the EU dropped its “Open Finance” undertaking, with which the EU needed to make it simpler for third events to entry monetary knowledge, however which might in the end result in the dear knowledge from European monetary gross sales falling to the massive US tech firms. The BVI additionally advocates instantly ending the newest EU undertaking to centralize the supervision of asset managers throughout borders. Duplicate buildings, a number of stories and a whole bunch of latest EU officers usually are not the precise reply, however fairly much less regulation and higher cooperation between the Paris monetary regulator ESMA and the supervisors within the particular person international locations, says the BVI.

For the German market, the fund affiliation requires the tax guidelines to be clarified in such a manner that church buildings and foundations can safely entrust their cash to fund managers working in Germany with out working the chance of shedding their tax benefits. The present state of affairs signifies that the overwhelming majority of fund managers work from London or Paris, which influences their funding choices to the detriment of Germany. Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy additionally provide higher situations.

The federal authorities’s plans to reform “Riester” and do with out ensures and lifelong pension necessities are praised, as is the deliberate early begin pension for kids, which must be as broad as doable and linked to the retirement financial savings account. As in Sweden, the German statutory pension should even be funded as quickly as doable.

Even earlier than the reforms, increasingly German traders had been utilizing funds. Private traders invested a web 86 billion euros in funds in 2025, the second finest yr in historical past after 2021 (117 billion euros) and forward of 2000 (75 billion euros). The majority went into fairness funds. Of the inflows of 52 billion euros, nearly 46 billion euros went to ETFs and simply over six billion euros to the costlier actively managed funds. For the primary time, the BVI, in cooperation with the central securities depository Clearstream, was capable of present an summary of the ETF holdings in Germany: a great quarter of the general public fund belongings are actually in ETFs. In the equities sector it’s nearly half, a great 400 billion euros. In complete, the business manages 4,851 billion euros, 380 billion euros greater than a yr in the past. It stays a very powerful accomplice in long-term pension provision: insurers make investments 536 billion euros in funds, different pension establishments equivalent to pension funds make investments 813 billion euros.