Legg Mason Inc. applied to run actively managed exchange-traded funds for the first time in its 27-year history as a public company, seeking to capture a slice of the asset management industry's fastest-growing segment.
Legg Mason filed an application Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The application may take months to complete, and the Baltimore company has yet to decide on a specific strategy for the first ETF it markets to investors, Mary Athridge, a spokeswoman for Legg Mason, said in an interview Tuesday.
ETFs are the fastest-growing segment of the asset management industry, with assets soaring more than tenfold in the past decade, compared with a doubling of assets in mutual funds, according to data from the Investment Company Institute in Washington.
ETFs assets in the U.S. surged 46%, to $777.1 billion, last year, driven by $116.5 billion in sales, according to ICI.
