A $1.45-trillion-AUM (as of May 31), publicly traded asset manager is preparing to drop a six-year-old set of ETF brands.

Jennifer M. "Jenny" Johnson Franklin Resources, Inc. (dba Franklin Templeton) President, CEO

On Monday, Patrick O'Connor, head of global ETFs at Franklin Templeton [profile], and Jennifer Ball, head of U.S. marketing, confirmed that the San Mateo, California-based company is preparing to drop its LibertyShares, Liberty, and LibertyQ ETF brands (not to be confused with an unaffiliated subadvised ETF shop). The change is scheduled for August 1 and will affect 17 U.S. ETFs. (Four of those planned rebrandings were previously revealed).

The affected ETFs already have "Franklin" in their names, so they'll simply have shorter names, according to Franklin's filings with the SEC. And Franklin has a host of ETFs that won't be affected by the change, as they already use only the Franklin brand or the brand of one of the firm's boutiques (like ClearBridge, Royce, and Wamco). All told, Franklin offers more than 50 ETFs in the U.S., and its global ETF platform had about $12 billion in AUM as of June 30.

The rebranding comes nine years after Franklin's first ETF debuted and six years after Franklin's first LibertyShares ETFs launched.

"We believe these updates will help bring clarity to our clients now that we have built out such a robust suite of offerings across both indexed and active ETFs," O'Connor states. 

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