Xtrackers California Municipal Bond ETF’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Bronze. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the least expensive fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's effective investment philosophy earns it an Above Average Process Pillar rating. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating, and this rating is inherited from vehicles belonging to the same branding entity and is indirectly assigned by an analyst.

Analyst Rating

Xtrackers California Municipal Bond ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. The leading factor in the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. The size of the portfolio management team also supports the process. With four portfolio managers, the fund is reasonably well-resourced. Lastly, the process is limited by the experience of the management team, which averages four years at this fund.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is: 

The investment seeks investment results that correspond generally to the performance, before fees and expenses, and of the ICE AMT-Free Broad Liquid California Municipal Index.  The underlying index tracks the performance of U.S. dollar denominated investment grade tax-exempt debt publicly issued in the U.S. domestic market by the state of California and its political subdivisions. The fund will invest at least 80% of its total assets (but typically far more) in instruments that comprise the underlying index. The fund is non-diversified.

Above Average

Process

DWS’s team is valuable but does not stand out as one of the industry's best, warranting an Average People Pillar rating. There are four managers listed on the fund: Bryan Richards, Deepak Yadav, Ronald Leung, Benjamin Spalding. The team is largely unproven, as its members only average four years of portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 11 strategies, with solid long-term prospects. The strategies average a Silver asset-weighted Morningstar Medalist Rating, indicating a position to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

Average

People

In the past two years, DWS has been under heavy scrutiny from the SEC and German authorities owing to greenwashing allegations that were initially raised in August 2021 by the firm’s former chief sustainability officer Desiree Fixler. The SEC announced on Sept. 25, 2023, that it has fined DWS USD 19 million for failing to implement procedures to ensure that all investment staff members were following its environmental, social, and governance policies. This relates to funds where ESG factors were analyzed alongside other financially material factors, but where managers retained discretion over ESG outcomes. In addition, the firm was ordered to pay USD 6 million for deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering processes that were uncovered in a separate investigation. The investigation by the German authorities into the firm's ESG disclosures is still ongoing.  
The SEC findings underline that despite strong senior management commitment, it takes a considerable amount of time and resources to embed sustainability across all levels of an organization for firms without a long-standing sustainability heritage. Overconfidence and failure to deal with internal criticism adequately appear to have contributed to DWS' misleading statements on ESG matters. While it's difficult to quantify the financial damage to clients and no misstatements were detected in financial disclosures or prospectuses, we believe the firm’s shortcomings have the potential to adversely affect investor outcomes. Hence, we welcome DWS' efforts to strengthen governance around ESG integration and communicate more conservatively about its ESG capabilities.
Questionable and unsteady leadership has contributed to the DWS' woes. Previous CEO Asoka Woehrmann, who had spearheaded the firm's ESG push, stepped down in June 2022 as a result of the ESG investigations. His credibility had already been harmed following his use of personal email for business purposes and a large payment made to him by a client when he was head of Deutsche Bank's private-client business before being appointed as DWS' CEO in 2018. His successor Stefan Hoops is the firm's sixth CEO in the past 10 years, highlighting the instability in the firm's top leadership. This appointment also shows the continued influence of its parent company, even after the partial IPO in 2018. Hoops has spent most of his career at Deutsche Bank but has no asset-management background.
Despite all these negative headlines and shaky leadership, DWS has managed to remain quite stable in its investment ranks. The firm has also made strides to gain greater independence. For example, since 2020, bonuses have been linked to the firm's own performance rather than to that of the bank as a whole, which supports alignment and talent retention. Variable remuneration takes into account performance of up to five years.
DWS' vast fund lineup covers all asset classes, including passive strategies, which are offered under the Xtrackers brand. Many offerings don't distinguish themselves, but there are genuine areas of strength among active strategies, and fees are competitive across many funds. While the product development process has been streamlined, and although the firm has launched new strategies at a slower pace, lineup turnover remains a concern as a culture of asset-gathering prevails. New offerings are partly related to an expansion of ESG capabilities, but the firm is also building out its thematic equity, multi-asset, alternatives, and exchange-traded fund range. 
At this stage, we continue to believe that DWS' strengths justify a Parent Pillar rating of Average despite several weaknesses in its stewardship practices, but we will closely monitor the company for further disruption.

Parent

Xtrackers California Municipal Bond ETF

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CA tracks a market value-weighted index of investment grade, tax-exempt California municipal bonds.

Freeport-McMoRan

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News for Xtrackers California Municipal Bond ETF ETF (CA)