PowerShares Senior Loan ETF wins William F. Sharpe Award

Jan 2nd, 2014 | By | Category: Alternatives / Multi-Asset

The PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio (BKLN), a senior leveraged loan exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Invesco PowerShares, has received the prestigious William F. Sharpe Award for ETF Product of the Year.

PowerShares Senior Loan ETF (BKLN) wins William F. Sharpe Award

William F. Sharpe received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990 for his work on equilibrium pricing in capital markets.

Listed on March 3, 2011, the fund represents the first and largest floating-rate senior loan ETF available to US investors having recently surpassed $6.2 billion in assets under management.

The fund is based on the S&P/LSTA US Leveraged Loan 100 Index and normally invests at least 80% of its total assets in the component securities that comprise this index.

The index is designed to track the market-weighted performance of the largest institutional leveraged loans based on market weightings, spreads and interest payments. The fund and the index are rebalanced and reconstituted bi-annually, in June and December.

“We take pride in being an ETF innovator and are truly honoured to be recognized by our industry peers with the 2013 William F. Sharpe Award for ETF Product of the Year,” said Dan Draper, Invesco PowerShares Managing Director of global ETFs. “These awards are a reflection of PowerShares strength in providing investors intelligent exposure to the liquid alternative space.”

“PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio (BKLN) was a groundbreaking listing for investors seeking to reduce duration in their bond holdings and has become a flagship ETF in this space,” added Gregory Stoeckle, President and Managing Director of the fund’s sub-adviser, Invesco Senior Secured Management.

Named after the Nobel prize-winning economist, the William F. Sharpe Awards recognize the best and the brightest innovators in the field of indexing, ETFs, and investment management.

The fund was recognized as ETF Product of the Year for having the most significant impact on the ETF market over the previous 12 months. This is the third consecutive year a PowerShares ETF has received this prestigious award, following the PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (SPLV) as the 2012 recipient and the PowerShares Fundamental High Yield Corporate Bond Portfolio (PHB) in 2011.

In addition, the PowerShares S&P 500 Downside Hedged Portfolio (PHDG) was awarded ETF Innovation of the Year and recently surpassed $100 million in assets under management. The fund’s underlying index, the S&P 500 Dynamic VEQTOR Index, was also recognized with the award for Index Innovation of the Year.

This fund is an actively managed ETF that seeks to achieve positive total returns in rising or falling markets that are not directly correlated to broad equity or fixed-income market returns. The fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by using a quantitative, rules-based strategy designed to provide investors with broad equity market exposure with an implied volatility hedge by dynamically allocating between equity, volatility and cash.

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