The 535 liquidations, a slight increase since Q1, and 340 mergers leave 31,787 mutual funds registered for sale in Europe at the end of June 2012.
The 417 funds created in Europe is the lowest number for Q2 results of the last five years. This reflects a decrease of 60% compared with the peak in Q2 2008 and a decrease of 50% compared to the same period in 2011, when 838 funds were launched, the report stated.
But the trend with fund mergers may be indicating that the consolidation process is slowing as the number of mergers fell 23% from 441 in Q2 2011 to 340 in Q2 2012, which also happened to be the quarter with the lowest number of mergers in the last five years.
Luxembourg continued to dominate the fund market in Europe, hosting 8,443 funds, followed by France, where 4,638 funds were domiciled.
In terms of asset classes, equity funds dominate with 37% of the funds available for sale, followed by mixed-asset funds at 24% and bond funds at 18%.
