Vanguard Taking The Ax to Fees On 10 Sector ETFs

Vanguard, the third-largest U.S. ETF issuer, is taking the ax to expense ratios on ten of its popular sector ETFs, a move that will intensify the firn's rivalry with the SPDRs family of sector funds. The 10 Vanguard ETFs will mostly see their expense ratios pared to 0.19% from 0.24%. That undercuts the comparable by SPDR ETFs by one basis point. Most of the SPDRs sector ETFs currently have expense ratios of 0.2%. Vanguard announced the changes in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, but the funds still show expense ratios of 0.24% on Vanguard's Web site. The ETFs undergoing the changes are the Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF

, Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF

, Vanguard Energy ETF

, Vanguard Health Care ETF

, Vanguard Industrials ETF

, Vanguard Information Technology ETF

, Vanguard Materials ETF

, Vanguard Telecommunication Services ETF

and the Vanguard Utilities ETF

. The Vanguard Financials ETF

will see its fees cut to 0.23% from 0.27%, but the new expense ratio is still above the 0.2% offered by the Financial Select Sector SPDR

. Vanguard had 64 ETFs with $173.3 billion in assets under management at the end of November, according to data from the National Stock Exchange.