Marty Flanagan is streamlining the face that
Invesco [
profile] shows the world.
Flanagan, CEO of the publicly traded asset manager, is consolidating all of Invesco's different brands. That includes the
PowerShares [
profile] ETF business, the
Perpetual brand in the United Kingdom,
Trimark brand in Canada, and the
WL Ross brand in private equity, Invesco spokeswoman Jeaneen Terrio confirms.
"We're taking all of the sub-brands that existed under Invesco and we're starting to transition that to one global brand, which will be Invesco," Terrio says. "All of those brands between now and the end of 2018 will be retired and become Invesco."
There's no official word yet on how the rebranding will affect the names on Invesco's various mutual funds and ETFs. Yet the rebranding could change how Invesco handles the "huge marketing budget" for the
PowerShares QQQ ETF. That
$59.7-billion ETF is set up as a trust, which means that its marketing budget has been used specifically for PowerShares alone. Now the PowerShares brand will give way to the Invesco one.
"This opens up more collaboration with Invesco," Terrio says. "Theoretically Invesco will have access to that marketing budget."
Flanagan and the rest of Invesco's senior management team see the rebranding as part of a shift towards "more of a solutions-based approach" that is more product- and structure-agnostic, Terrio says.
"Invesco has evolved," Flanagan tells
Barron's. "The industry has evolved."
The rebranding news comes as Invesco is
absorbing one ETF shop,
Source, and preparing to
acquire a different ETF business from
Guggenheim. That Guggenheim ETF business, in turn, has combined several different ETF brands, including Claymore's BulletShares ETFs and Rydex's ETFs.
The rebranding also comes eight years after Invesco
dropped the "Aim" from its brand and acquired Van Kampen. 
Edited by:
Neil Anderson, Managing Editor
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