Advisors and others interested in Vanguard products are getting an early Christmas present, the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based mutual fund firm is planning to launch another 19 index products. The products also mark a rapprochement between Vanguard and Stnadard & Poor's.

The index fund specialist and index maker saw a schism in 2000 when negotiations over whether and at what price Vanguard could license the S&P indices broke down (see S&P Parent Sues Vanguard, June 8, 2000.

The new funds will include both regular mutual funds and ETFs based on the Russell and S&P benchmarks. They will also include municipal bond and international real estate products. It filed with the SEC for the products on Thursday morning.

Vanguard is also adding ETF class shares for its Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

Officials at the Shipyard say that they are targeting the new products to be the low-cost versions in the marketplace.

"We recognize that institutional investors and financial advisors may have a preference for certain benchmarks, and our goal is to offer them best-in-class funds and ETFs based on a choice of leading index providers, including FTSE, MSCI, Russell, and S&P," said Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb.

He added that Vanguard is focused on "developing a full array of stock and bond funds and ETFs to cover domestic and international markets and market segments."

McNabb said the new funds will include a suite of seven equity funds with ETF Shares across different asset classes.

It will also open eight equity funds and ETFs targeting the growth and value segments of the S&P 500 Index and the growth, value, and blend segments of the S&P MidCap 400 and SmallCap 600 Indexes.

For fixed income, Vanguard will offer three new municipal bond index funds with traditional and exchange-traded shares, tracking benchmarks in the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Index series.

The new real estate fund will be benchmarked to the S&P Global ex-U.S. Property Index. Vanguard Global ex-U.S. Real Estate Index Fund will offer Investor Shares, Institutional Shares, Signal Shares, and ETF Shares. 

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief


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