XShares Reinvented as ETF Hawker

With the immense popularity of exchange-traded funds, many investment companies have jumped on the bandwagon to add ETFs to their menus. But one company, instead of merely tweaking its products, completely revamped itself and changed its name to embrace Wall Street's investment darling.

New York-based XShares had never offered anything like a mutual fund or ETF to the public until a year ago this month, when it filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission to create its first set of ETFs called HealthShares.

Since then, it rolled five HealthShares ETFs onto the market, with another 15 waiting to be launched. The company has also filed for several other families of ETFs, including StateShares and Independence Shares, and is working with other companies to create privately labeled ETFs.

Birth of an ETF Firm

XShares was born from the marriage of two companies: Ferghana Partners, a company that provided advice to life-sciences firms, and Wellspring BioCapital Partners, an investment firm offering products based on next-generation treatments, therapies and cures for diseases.

Under the name Ferghana-Wellspring, the company filed as a corporate entity in August; it then changed the name to XShares in January.

Jeff Feldman, CEO and co-founder of XShares, says that when the company decided to enter the ETF space, the initial focus was to create useful tools for investors to get exposure to the $2 trillion health care industry.

He adds that the name XShares actually originated from the idea that the company could create a platform to private-label ETFs for other companies. The "X" is a blank to be filled in.