MutualFundWire.com: FocusShares Co-Founder Jumps Back into Distribution

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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

FocusShares Co-Founder Jumps Back into Distribution

Erik Liik is back.

The ETF-industry veteran has founded his own consulting firm, Erik Liik and Associates, where he will consult fundsters on the subjects of ETF distribution and product development.

Liik was a co-founder of FocusShares in 2007 and served as its president and chief executive.

FocusShares had run four tactical ETFs, but shuttered them after the 2008 financial crisis. It was then acquired by Scottrade in 2008 and with this new owner and filed to launched a new line of 15 ETFs in December 2010 that were based on float market cap indices.

However, Liik was replaced as chief executive by Scott Golde in July 2012 and the 15 FocusShares' ETFs were shuttered in August of that year.

For six months after leaving FocusShares, Liik served as a sales and marketing consultant for Teucrium Trading.

Liik is a long-standing veteran in the ETF space. For five-years, ending in July 2006, he served as managing director of the ETF Marketplace for the American Stock Exchange, where he advised asset management firms on ETF issues such as product development, distribution and marketing. He was a point-person in the lobbying efforts with the SEC to approve 19b-4 listing rules to allow for the listing and trading of leveraged and inverse ETFs ?

Before that, Liik was for five years senior vice president - national sales manager at Funds Distributor Inc., where he played a key role in the launch of the Word Equity Benchmark Shares (WEBS), predecessor of the iShares MSCI products. He directed sales and marketing for the 17 country-specific ETFs.

Before that, he was a vice president for sales and marketing for the Swiss bank Julius Baer.

Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=46373

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