(Bloomberg) — Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer of global fixed income at the world’s largest exchange-traded fund issuer, is setting sail on his first strategy under the vehicle.
The actively managed BlackRock Flexible Income ETF (ticker BINC) will aim to outperform and provide investors long-term income by investing in “harder to reach fixed-income sectors” such as high-yield bonds, emerging markets debt and securitized assets, according to a Tuesday press release.
While BlackRock Inc. is the largest ETF manager with nearly $3 trillion spread across more than 1,000 funds worldwide, BINC is the first ETF that Rieder is personally managing. Fixed-income ETFs have boomed in popularity in recent years, a category dominated by BlackRock — the asset manager controls roughly $600 billion of the nearly $1.4 trillion held in US debt ETFs.
The advent of the ETF market has been “extraordinary” and has made it much easier to trade less-liquid fixed-income instruments such as high-yield bonds, Rieder said at a Tuesday press event.
“It’s been a big innovation and something I think will continue to grow,” Rieder said at BlackRock’s New York City headquarters.
BINC carries an annual expense ratio of 50 basis points and is actively managed by a team including Rieder, Jacob Caplain and Samir Lakhani.
In addition to BINC’s launch, the actively managed BlackRock Large Cap Value ETF (BLCV) also began trading on Tuesday. BLCV is the debut ETF of Tony DeSpirito, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of US fundamental equities, and charges 55 basis points.
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