BlackRock's ETF landscape industry review has claimed global ETF assets will grow by up to 30% in 3010, having grown 45.7% in 2009.

It found that as at end December 2009, the AUM of Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) reached US$38.52nn, up 62.1% YTD, and the iShares FTSE/Xinhua A50 China Tracker ranked first in Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) in terms of AUM, amounting to US$6.1bn as at end December 2009.

It claimed the top three providers account for 71.6% of total assets, with iShares taking 47.2%, State Street Global Advisors having 15.5% and Vanguard with 8.9% of the market share. It also claimed that out of 1947 ETFs, 100 of these accounted for 66% of the US$1 trillion AUM.

The review said it expected more products from traditional active asset managers and alternative asset class exposures becoming available to 'mainstream' retail and institutional investors through standardized and regulated fund structures.

An important change is that hedge funds are now noticing the appeal of ETFs and expects more of them to create their own ETFs with their own funds as the underlying exposure in order to broaden their distribution capabilities.

However, it warned that while on one hand this would: "...give more investors access to the asset class and the ability to do so in small sizes, with daily liquidity" it would also: "...make it challenging for them to understand what they are investing in compared to the historical daily transparency of the underlying portfolio in low-cost index based exposures which ETFs have become known for."