Powershares Exchange-Traded Funds

In early January, 2009 the president of Invesco Trimark Ltd. (Invesco Trimark) was optimistic about the year ahead, particularly when compared to the perfect storm of 2008. That year saw global investment markets in turmoil, and Invesco Trimark's mutual fund assets had plummeted to almost half its value. The president and his team had spent nearly a year working and re-working a new product launch and by 2009 thought they had developed a unique and differentiated idea that would be difficult for the competition to replicate. This idea was to introduce to the Canadian market a suite of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) built around investments managed by Invesco Trimark's sister company in the United States. This new product combined key features of ETFs traded on U.S. exchanges with key features of Canadian mutual funds. As innovative and exciting as ETFs promised to be, the president knew that it would be met with reservation from Invesco Trimark's traditional mutual fund distributors who remained skeptical. The president wondered how best to communicate the new product idea given the contradictory and competing ideas that existed not only in the market but in his own firm. Was it possible for mutual funds and ETFs to co-exist?