MutualFundWire.com: A $117B-AUM AM Helps Investors Bet On the Rise of Alts

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Thursday, June 5, 2025

A $117B-AUM AM Helps Investors Bet On the Rise of Alts

The team at a 70-year-old, $116.6-billion-AUM* asset manager in the Big Apple is offering retail investors a new way to invest in the rise of the alts space: via a thematic ETF.

This morning, Brandon Rakszawski, vice president and director of product management at VanEck [profile], unveiled the launch of the VanEck Alternative Asset Manager ETF (GPZ on the NYSE Arca, Inc.). New York City-based Van Eck Associates Corporation serves as investment advisor and administrator to the new ETF, while VanEck subsidiary MarketVector Indexes GmbH serves as index provider.

GPZ's inception date was yesterday (June 4), and the new fund comes with an expense ratio of 40 basis points. The new ETF has about $625,690 in AUM**.

The new fund is designed to track the MarketVector Alternative Asset Managers Index (MVAALTTR), which in turn follows the performance of publicly traded traded asset managers in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. GPZ has a two-person PM team: Griffin Driscoll, deputy portfolio manager; and Peter Liao, PM.

Rakszawski describes "the structural growth of private markets" as "one of the major developments in finance and investing in recent years" and puts the launch of GPZ in the context of "volatility in the equity markets, the growing potential for rate cuts, and a number of other factors ... creating a far more favorable environment for many private market managers to deploy the massive reserves of capital they have accrued."

"As the various sub-categories of the alts universe have grown, so too has the desire among individual investors and wealth managers to gain access to the diversification benefits and returns that alternatives may deliver," Rakszwaski states. "Access to leading alternative asset managers has expanded, but until now, there hasn’t been an ETF offering broad exposure to these firms. GPZ changes that, providing investors with a comprehensive way to tap into this opportunity, and we're excited to bring it to market at a pivotal moment for private markets."

GPZ is a non-diversified, passively managed series of the VanEck ETF Trust. The new ETF's other service providers include:

Dechert LLP as counsel;

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent accounting firm;

State Street Bank and Trust Company as custodian, fund accountant, securities lending agent, and transfer agent; and

Van Eck Securities Corporation as distributor.