NBAD prepared for long haul on ETF fund - The National

Investors had little enthusiasm for National Bank of Abu Dhabi's exchange-traded fund (ETF) last year.

High expenses and a lack of appetite for the recently introduced OneShare Dow Jones UAE 25 ETF caused the investment vehicle to report a widened full-year loss of Dh3.06 million, from a loss of Dh726,974 the previous year. The fund was launched in April 2010.

An ETF tracks a basket of stocks or commodities but trades like an individual share. In this case, the OneShare ETF includes the top 25 publicly traded companies in the UAE. "Because the ETF is still at an embryonic stage, the fixed costs for running that fund are quite high," said Saleem Khokhar, the head of equities at NBAD and a director at the ETF. "We are willing to ride out the expenses until it grows in terms of size."

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