Philippe El-Asmar describes his job as “very busy, but in a good way”. He certainly has a lot on his plate. Working with Barclays Global Advisors, his investor solutions group debuted the market’s first exchange traded notes, branded iPath, last June. (Instead of tracking a basket of securities as exchange traded funds do, iPath are debt securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Amex that are linked to the performance of one index.)
The group now has eight separate, open-ended exchange-traded note (ETN) offerings for US investors. Last year came three different commodity-linked ETNs and one linked to the India MSCI. In May this year it launched
