The SEC granted Eaton Vance an exemption from certain provisions of the Investment Company Act of 1940 to permit the offering of exchange-traded managed funds, said Eaton Vance spokeswoman Robyn Tice.
Eaton Vance filed for exemptive relief on March 27, 2013, to offer ETMFs, which are active non-transparent ETFs. The order would apply to 18 initial fund offerings. The ETMFs will be developed by Eaton Vance’s subsidiary Navigate Fund Solutions. Navigate plans to enter into license and services agreements with Eaton Vance and other registered investment advisers to permit the offering of ETMFs.
After the Securities and Exchange Commission gave an exemption to offer the funds, which Navigate has named NextShares, the SEC approved on FridayNasdaq’s request to list and trade the funds.
The SEC must also declare effective the registration statements of individual funds and approve fund-specific rules to permit exchange listing and trading.
This exemption notice follows the SEC rejecting BlackRock’s application to offer ETMFs in October. In a preliminary ruling on BlackRock’s application, the SEC said it rejected the company’s proposal in part because of the “lack of portfolio transparency or an adequate substitute for portfolio transparency coupled with a potentially deficient backup mechanism.”
SEC spokeswoman Judith Burns declined to comment beyond what the commission said in its rulings.