State Street To Introduce 3 New Regional Small-Cap ETFs

State Street's

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) unit, the bank's ETF business, has filed plans to roll out three new regional small-cap ETFs designed to give investors exposure to foreign companies with market values of less than $2 billion. The SPDR S&P Small Cap Emerging Asia Pacific ETF will track the S&P Asia Pacific Emerging Under USD $2 billion Index. The SPDR S&P Small Cap Emerging Europe ETF will track the S&P Emerging Europe Under USD $2 billion Index while the the SPDR S&P Small Cap Emerging Latin America ETF will track the S&P Emerging Latin America Under USD $2 billion Index. Tickers and expense ratios were not disclosed in the filing. Emerging markets small-cap ETFs have proven popular with investors and the new SSgA offerings will not be without competition. In Latin America, the new SSgA will do battle with the Market Vectors Latin America Small-Cap Index ETF

, which was introduced last year and has $26.1 million in assets under management. Asia is another region teeming with small-cap ETF competition, though that is found primarily at the country-specific level. SSgA already offers the SPDR S&P International Small Cap ETF

, which allocates more than half its weight to Asia and the new SSgA offering could also compete with the WisdomTree Emerging Markets SmallCap Dividend ETF

, which is also heavily allocated to Asia. SSgA could be first to market with its small-cap play on emerging Europe as that region currently has no ETF exclusively devoted to it. At the end of June SSgA was the second-largest U.S. ETF issuer with $259.3 billion in AUM and 101 funds on the market, according to data from the National Stock Exchange.