From team building to day-to-day operational excellence, Satori Capital has adopted an internal motto: "Satori leads the way."

Legg Mason aims to adapt to new generation of workers who expect more.

BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street command 80% of ETF assets under management in the U.S., but smaller institutional investors continue to look beyond the Big 3 for unique products.

Active management goes against the grain for exchange-traded funds (and fund flows in general), which have favored indexed strategies.

Competition for today's knowledge worker is intense, says Art Steinmetz, who oversees $220 billion in AUM and around 2,000 employees, as chairman and CEO of OppenheimerFunds in New York. That's led the manager, a first-time winner in Pensions & Investments' Best Places to Work in Money Management survey, to up its game, Mr. Steinmetz said.

“There is no trade-off between being a great place to work and being a great investment,” said Randy Eisenman, co-founder and managing partner of Satori Capital. “As is the case with our firm, we look to invest in companies with a highly engaged group of employees.”

Principal Global, which employs about 1,500 in asset management in the U.S. and is headed by CEO James P. McCaughan, is a five-time winner in Pensions & Investments' Best Places to Work in Money Management survey. Principal Financial offers individual, workplace and institutional asset management, insurance and retirement products.

“There's just a great deal of care for employees,” said one employee about Resource Consulting Group in Orlando, Fla., which is making its debut on Pensions & Investments' Best Places to Work in Money Management ranking.

Bats Global Markets CEO Chris Concannon has been at the forefront of securities product and trading innovation from the start of his career.

The ETF Deathwatch is no place for an exchange-traded product to live, but at least the neighborhood is crowded with nearly 500 ETPs on the list.

The era of seemingly constant and endless growth of the $2 trillion exchange-traded product universe in the U.S. might be waning. Market leadership among issuers is consolidating. New products and entrants are leaning heavily on broad distribution and brand awareness.

The gradual opening of mainland China's securities markets to foreign investors hasn't exactly proceeded with the pace or liquidity that U.S. exchange-traded product investors have come to expect.

In early January, State Street Global Advisors, which manages $392 billion in SPDR ETFs, launched three actively managed exchange-traded funds with MFS Investment Management. That same week, Emerging Global Advisors and The TCW Group announced plans to market three emerging markets investment-grade bond index ETFs under the EGShares brand with TCW serving as subadviser.

A year removed from a triple-play of intense product and fee competition — Charles Schwab's fee cuts on its exchange-traded fund lineup, the introduction of cheaper “core” products from BlackRock Inc.'s iShares, and an equity index transition by Vanguard Group Inc. to cut fund expenses — the U.S. exchange-traded product market has settled into a somewhat less adversarial mood with a renewed focus on distribution and education for an increasingly diverse audience.

Although corresponding to roughly a quarter of the value of global securities markets, international bonds get short shrift in U.S.-based institutional and retail investment portfolios. The same holds true in the burgeoning market for exchange-traded funds offering exposure to international fixed-income securities.

Liquidity and cost trump all other benefits of exchange-traded funds for institutional investors. Yet the basic attributes of these rapidly growing category of products also have large investors shying away from most areas of index and asset class innovation — where costs are higher and trading is lower.