Biggest Investor's Decision To Reduce Ownership Sees Huge Drop Of Assets In IShares ESG Fund

A Brief Summary

The iShares ESG MSCI EM Leaders ETF saw massive outflows this week, resulting in a huge decline in assets managed by the exchange-traded fund focusing on sustainable market companies.

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Finland's Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company had 13 million shares in the ETF a couple of months ago, making it the fund's top investor at the time.

"We decided to reduce our exposure to equities in emerging markets. Our view is that risks in that area may have increased," Venalainen said and added the transaction surely decreased capital in the fund.

"We are by no means disappointed with the ETF, the decision was purely allocative," he said.

The number of outstanding shares in the fund, which has underperformed its benchmark and includes Taiwan Semi, Tencent, and Alibaba as its top three holdings, decreased by more than 91% to 1.2 million on Monday from 13.9 million on Dec. 22.

The fund now has roughly around $74 million in net assets under management, down from ten times earlier this month.