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Integrity Life Companies Launche
WisdomTree
debuts International Real Estate ETF
June 6, 2007
SAN DIEGO
(ETFguide.com) - The seven-year boom in domestic real estate investment trusts (REITS)
has caused some investors to start looking abroad.
To that end,
a number of newly launched exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been begun tracking
international real estate.
One such
offering is the WisdomTree International Real Estate Fund (AMEX: DRW) which
began trading yesterday. The fund tracks an index comprised of approximately 224
dividend paying companies in 19 developed market countries across Europe, Asia
and Far East whose primary business is operating or developing real estate. This
is WisdomTree’s 25th fund
focused on non-U.S. equity markets.
WisdomTree's real estate ETF has an expense ratio
of 0.58 percent and will compete head-to-head with the SPDR DJ Wilshire
International Real Estate ETF (AMEX: RWX) which was introduced during the first
quarter of 2007.
"Real estate has been a strong performing asset
class over the last few years and we are pleased to introduce a unique
investment vehicle focused exclusively on diversifying investors across
international borders,” said Bruce Lavine, President &
COO of WisdomTree. “We think an investment in
international real estate can provide significant diversification benefits as
the asset class has a relatively low correlation with domestic real estate and
offers access to fast growing real estate sectors around the world.”
Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisdomTree, added,
“This new ETF is consistent with WisdomTree’s
focus on fundamental weighting, which is designed to offer investors the
potential for long-term performance, with lower volatility than comparable
international real estate market cap-weighted ETFs.”
As of May,
the New York-based firm managed $4 billion in ETF
assets.
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