Fidelity International is planning further hires to its ETF business as the asset manager looks to capitalise on the rapid growth of actively managed ETFs in Europe.
The group has made expanding its ETF team a priority and is looking to add staff across product strategy, capital markets and distribution, according to Financial News. Recent appointments include Elisa Prezzavento, who joined from State Street to work on ETF product strategy, and former BlackRock executive Thomas Taw, who has joined its Asia-Pacific distribution operation.
Fidelity plans to expand its ETF product team to around six people and is also developing its specialist ETF sales presence across European markets.
The asset manager currently oversees around $12bn across almost 20 active ETFs, making it Europe’s second-largest active ETF provider behind JPMorgan. JPMorgan has around $52bn in the sector.
The expansion comes as competition for active ETF assets intensifies. European active ETFs attracted around $4.5bn of net inflows during the first seven months of 2026, with newer entrants including Schroders, Jupiter and Columbia Threadneedle adding to the number of traditional asset managers targeting the market.
Fidelity already offers active equity ETFs including its Equity Research Enhanced range. Its European strategy, for example, combines the group’s fundamental research with a portfolio designed to retain relatively broad market exposure rather than making concentrated active bets.
Our view
David Batchelor, senior analyst at QuotedData, said: “The significance here is less the individual hires and more what they say about how seriously traditional managers now take the ETF market. For firms such as Fidelity, active ETFs are moving from being an additional distribution format to an important part of future growth plans. Fidelity already has the research capability and investment strategies, so the challenge is increasingly about putting them into a wrapper investors want, distributing them effectively and keeping fees competitive. Strong industry flows suggest demand is developing, but building an ETF team does not guarantee assets – managers still have to demonstrate why investors should pay for active management when passive equivalents are cheap and highly liquid. The increasingly interesting battleground is therefore not simply active versus passive, but whether established active managers can combine their existing investment expertise with the price, transparency and convenience investors have come to expect from ETFs”.
