JPMorgan hires former Global X chief investment officer as ETF strategist

By Suzanne McGee

(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Wednesday its asset management division had hired Jon Maier, the former chief investment officer of Global X, to head a new global research effort focusing on exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Assets at J.P. Morgan Asset management’s ETF division stood at $8.43 trillion at the end of 2023, having grown from $2.02 trillion in 2014 when the bank entered the ETF business, according to TrackInsight.

The advent of actively managed ETFs in 2019 and the 2020 debut of the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF, now a $33 billion fund, has helped the bank’s asset management division expand more rapidly than some of its much larger rivals.

The bank’s assets grew nearly 50% in 2023, compared to 18% for BlackRock and 25% for Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors, the two other ETF giants, data from VettaFi showed.

“We think ETFs are hitting an inflection point, gaining market share from mutual funds,” Bryon Lake, global head of ETF solutions at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in an interview.

In his new role, Maier will conduct analysis and publish “ETF Insights” for investment clients.

Maier left Global X – a dedicated ETF provider now owned by South Korea’s Mirae Asset Financial Group – in December.

Prior to becoming Global X’s first chief investment officer in 2017, he had spent about eight years selecting ETFs to include in model portfolios offered by Merrill Lynch, earning for himself the moniker of “Mr. ETF,” according to some of his peers.

It is the latest significant move by a senior executive in the ETF sector in recent months.

Late last year, State Street poached Anna Paglia, former global head of ETFs at Invesco, to serve in another newly-created role, that of chief business officer. At Invesco, Paglia oversaw the launch of more than 100 of that firm’s ETFs.

(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; Editing by Ira Iosebashvili and Jamie Freed)