PowerShares Capital Management LLC, a Chicago investment manager, said it plans to start a family of municipal bond exchange-traded funds.
The first two ETFs, the PowerShares Insured Municipal Bond and the PowerShares National Municipal Bond Portfolios, will be added to PowerShares' family of 95 exchange-traded funds when they begin trading in October.
The PowerShares Insured National Municipal Bond Portfolio is based on a soon-to-be-launched Merrill Lynch US Insured Core Municipal Securities Index, which will be designed to track the performance of U.S. dollar-denominated, AAA-insured, tax-exempt long-term debt publicly issued by U.S. municipalities in the U.S. domestic market.
The PowerShares National Municipal Bond Portfolio is based on a Merrill Lynch US Core Municipal Securities Index to be rolled out soon. The index will be designed to track the performance of U.S. dollar-denominated, investment-grade tax-exempt long-term debt publicly issued by a U.S. municipality.
PowerShares is a unit of Invesco PLC, a New York asset management firm. Invesco had $491 billion of assets under management at midyear.
