Lyxor Asset Management, part of France’s Société Genérale, has launched four exchange traded funds focusing on Korea, Hong Kong, Turkey and Eastern Europe.

The largest of the London-listed ETFs is the MSCI Korea Index, a free float-adjusted market capitalisation weighted index that monitors the performance of Korean stocks. It currently holds 113 companies.

The Hang Seng ETF, comprising 43 companies, concentrates on firms from the stock exchange of Hong Kong. Meanwhile the CECE Extended EUR Index is a weighted index of 47 blue chip stocks which are members of the CECE Composite Index and the SETX Index, traded on stock exchanges in the region of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

The Dow Jones Turkey Titans Index is the smallest of the new products, with only 20 companies in the portfolio. All four ETFs feature total expense ratios of between 0.5 per cent and 0.65 per cent per annum.

ETFs, a fast-growing segment of the investment fund world, enable investors to tap often hard-to-access markets. ETFs track stock, bond and other market indices without the investor having to own the indices' underlying components.