Vanguard Group surpassed State Street Global Advisors as the No. 2 exchange-traded fund provider, in terms of assets under management and overall market share.
According to ETF.com, a data and analytic website, Vanguard had $432.65 billion in ETF assets as of the close of business Tuesday, giving it a 21.8% market share. SSgA had $431.8 billion, for a 21.7% share. BlackRock still dominates the market with $756.42 billion, or a 38.1% share.
ETF.com said the move by Vanguard past SSgA had more to do with recent outflows from SSgA's flagship SPDR S&P 500 ETF than any sudden gain in Vanguard assets, though Vanguard had been nearing SSgA in recent months.
In 2014, BlackRock and SSgA saw assets increase but market share declined, while Vanguard gained both in assets and market share, according to data from ETFGI, a London-based ETF research and consulting firm. As of Dec. 31, BlackRock had a 37.2% market share, down 1.2 percentage points despite the increase in inflows; and SSgA, at 17.3%, was down 0.1 percentage point. Vanguard, meanwhile, at 16%, enjoyed a 1.9-percentage-point boost.
Vanguard had been “on the cusp” of having a higher market share than State Street, said Michael Rawson, fund analyst at Morningstar, who studies Vanguard. He expected Vanguard to surpass SSgA in market share sometime in 2015 by continuing to draw more ETF assets from its traditional retail clients.
Vanguard had global inflows of $88 billion in 2014, up 46% over 2013, according to data from BlackRock's ETP Landscape report, issued last month.
However, BlackRock and SSgA also had substantial inflows in 2014. BlackRock's iShares unit had a 61% increase in global flows into its exchange-traded funds last year, to $102.4 billion as of Dec. 31, while helping raise total iShares AUM to $1.034 trillion, up 12.3% from the previous year. SSgA's SPDR unit had global inflows of $41.2 billion last year, a 142% rise.
