An example of industry consolidation in and around the ETFs sector in the US.

Turner Investments, an international firm headquartered in the US, has won approval to buy exchange traded funds specialist firm Elkhorn Capital.

Besides ETFs, Elkhorn also is involved in areas such as exchange traded funds and unit investment trusts; the firm is located in Wheaton, Illinois.

The acquisition is subject only to documentation and not conditioned on winning clearance from shareholders, Turner said in a statement yesterday. Financial terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the next several weeks. 

Elkhorn, led by Ben Fulton, formerly part of Invesco’s global ETF business, was an early innovator in developing of ETFs and UITs, and was the platform through which Fulton grew Invesco’s ETF assets from approximately $6 billion to $82 billion over nine years.

The ETF industry has surged in recent years, boosted by a mix of forces giving more prominence to so-called passive investment strategies, such as rising regulatory burdens, a relatively long bull run for equities, disillusionment with high-cost Alpha strategies, and the attractions of ETFs for simplicity and ease of use. Not all industry participants are convinced that the passive trend can continue without a hitch, however, as shown by these comments.