In March, for the first time ever, a mutual fund went to sleep and woke up as an ETF. Two of them, in fact. And Guinness Atkinson, the issuer, couldn’t be happier about the experience — not that it didn’t take a lot of work to get across the finish line. Many more mutual funds will likely follow suit.

On this episode of Trillions, Eric and Joel — along with Claire Ballentine, the Bloomberg News reporter who covered the story — go deep with Guinness Atkinson’s Jim Atkinson and his lawyer, Alexandra Alberstadt about their new ETFs, the SmartETFs Dividend Builder ($DIVS) and SmartETFs Asia Pacific Dividend Builder ($ADIV). They discuss why they converted, what the process entailed, and how other issuers should approach the topic. Did we mention there will be many more of these?

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