Vanguard ramps up in Europe: it wants to roughly double European assets to 1 trillion USD over five years, expand its ETF offering from ~40 to 60–70 products (including new bond, multi-asset and geographically focused funds) and become the largest retail investment platform in the UK, overtaking Hargreaves Lansdown.

For equity investors, this is an important signal that "cheap index funds for the masses" are not just an American story — Vanguard, with USD 12 trillion under management, intends to aggressively leverage the EU's push to support retail investing, is expanding teams in Germany, Spain and France, and openly states that the goal is for Europeans to start seeing themselves as long-term investors, which could significantly increase the volume of passive flows into European equities and bonds over the next decade.