The Development and Future of European Active Exchange-Traded Funds

Exchange-traded funds are very popular in the finance industry. There are two major types of ETFs available: Active and Passive. The latter is far more represented than the first one. The goal of this paper is to identify what are the tendencies and what is the potential future of European Active ETFs. This thesis will firstly cover the theoretical framework that will allow to have a better understanding of active ETFs. After that, we will have an overview of the current European market. We will see that the number of active ETFs is very few in comparison of passive ones. We will also compare two samples of ETFs, one active and one passive. This analysis will show us that active ETFs managers are doing great and that active ETFs in Europe are an interesting investment. Finally, this paper will try to find if active ETFs will overcome one of its major flaws: The transparency. We will see that new products are going to be released and that they will probably increase the development of active ETFs.