ETF.com comes under Future Proof ownership, with vast staff reductions; CEO Salim Ramji says Vanguard 'turned the corner' on tech woes, but slams door on crypto

Matt Middleton and Anil D. Aggarwal are buying ETF.com and planning new events around the new acquisition. 

The two Future Proof principals announced the acquisition of a majority stake in ETF.com – a “real-time ETF news and analysis” site – from ETFS Capital, which will retain a minority interest. It will continue to operate as an independent business with its own team – to a point.

Middleton is the founder and CEO of Future Proof and is adding the ETF.com CEO role to his duties.

"We're bringing the creative, attendee-first approach that fueled Future Proof’s success to ETF.com, creating compelling events and networking that will redefine the industry dialogue," he says in a release.

 A source says ETF.com staff was cut down significantly in the deal, presumably because of the shift to an event orientation. Future Proof is loaded with event talent.

The sale by ETFS is partially a move of an asset from one portfolio to another, said Martyn James, Managing Partner, ETFS Capital.

“As the largest outside investor in Future Proof, we’ve enjoyed a close working relationship with Matt and Anil and have been consistently impressed by what they’ve built—not only with Future Proof, but throughout their careers,” he said.   

“Looking ahead to the future of ETF.com and the evolving media landscape, we couldn’t imagine a stronger team to lead the business into its next chapter.”

Ch, ch, ch changes

For Middleton, it's a full-circle-moment back to ETFs where he largely made his name. He grew Inside ETFs into a global franchise at Informa, an international events, digital services and academic research group. He also launched Exchange ETF, which he sold to VettaFi in 2022.

Bloomberg wrote the biggest ETF story of the day -- State Street brought back under the SSGA brand its Select SPDR series of funds, with their $317 billion of AUM, and it's hiring “specialists” to replace ALPS Inc. as the distributor. The story was broken by Intelligence (formerly Institutional Investor's Fund Action newsletter) July 25th.

Vanguard ups tech game… finally, but still nixes crypto

Vanguard Group is turning the corner on technology after three years of behind-the-scenes investments that are ready to blossom. But its old take on cryptocurrency has not changed an iota under new CEO Salim Ramji, according to a Morningstar transcript made available last month.

The Malvern, Pa., asset manager – long-maligned for its service and technology – says the thankless back office work is nearing completion and “front-end design” is moving onto the front burner, Ramji told Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar and Dan Lefkowitz, strategist for Morningstar Indexes.

“We have been doing for the past three years, two years before I started, a whole series of investments, particularly in technology and particularly in our technology stack,” he says. 

“I think we’re turning the corner, but this isn’t a destination. This is a constant journey. 

“What the technology changes have allowed us to do, and now, virtually, I think it’s like 90%-plus of our personal investor platform is cloud-native, and that was really hard, laborious, costly work to make that happen,” he added.

“But we think we now have the most modern kind of infrastructure stack in the industry. What it allows us to do, beyond all the kind of high levels of resilience that a platform like that now has, is to be able to make improvements on a lot of the front-end design and a lot of the front-end user experience. And so we’ve already been doing that over the past six months.”

Cash flow only

Yet, if investors were hoping a modernized Vanguard would use the overhaul as a way to usher in cryptocurrency … well, that's a whole other discussion, Ramji says in the interview.

“At Vanguard, we like investments that deliver cash flow or have the prospect of delivering cash flow,” he says. "That could be cash, could be bonds, could be equities, could, over time, if the circumstances are right, be private markets. 

It's not a question of old versus new because assets as old as King Tut are also not available at Vanguard.

“We don’t like things that don’t. We don’t have a gold ETF. We don’t have a silver ETF. And so it’s a logical extension then as to why we don’t have ETFs in other things that don’t either deliver cash flow, or have the prospect of delivering cash flow.”

The Big chill

In that vein, Ramji threw cold water on the whole “private investments” category.

“It’s got to be good quality. It’s got to be at a low fee. And, it’s got to be done in a way which is intelligible and simpler, if you will, than the client could otherwise get,” he says. 

“And we’re starting to experiment, if you will, around ‘could we provide access to private market investors to certain segments of clients that fit the profile?’” See: Vanguard and Blackstone disclose joint 'initiative' to bring alts to mass investors after private 'talks' leak months ahead of planned news release

“And so that’s an area that I’d say we’re experimenting and learning about."

But private investments have bigger problems than people realize, he adds.

"I think it’s going to be some time, like a long time, longer than most people expect, before this [alternative investing] really goes mainstream in a big way.