Assets under management in exchange traded funds will hit $1 trillion (€766bn) by next year and double that amount by 2011, according to ETF guru Deborah Fuhr, as investors withdraw from active funds in favour of more liquid, passive investments.

Speaking at Financial News' 'Investing in ETFs' conference in Frankfurt yesterday, Fuhr, global head of ETF research and implementation at Barclays Global Investors, said that there had been large inflows into fixed-income ETFs and exchange traded commodity funds amid market turmoil in the last quarter.