European exchange traded fund (ETF) bosses held a crisis meeting this morning but failed to reach an agreement on what the goals of a new Europe-wide trade body should be.

Today’s conference call was led by Lyxor Asset Management and Deutsche Bank who are trying to establish a trade body after weeks of headlines about the 'little-understood' risks posed by some products available to retail investors.

Both Lyxor, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Amundi offer ‘swap based’ products with an additional counterparty risk to investors, but not all of those banks on the call have these type of products, which led to some fierce discussion.

HSBC and State Street does not have any swap-based products while iShares only has a limited number and these organisations are questioning what value a dedicated trade body would have to them.

As a result it has also been proposed that the parent organisations of these businesses (such as BlackRock) move to ensure their ETF bosses have a greater presence on existing mutual fund trade bodies throughout UK and Europe.

The concern of not doing so from some on the call was that any new body would create a ‘them and us’ organisation, which would, in effect, alienate existing trade bodies still further.

What Investment.co.uk understands that representatives from Invesco Powershares and ETF Securities were not invited to today’s call.

Industry bigwigs on the call included Lyxor chairman Alan Dubois, Feargal Dempsey, head of product strategy at iShares (EMEA region) and Ted Hood, chief executive officer of Source.

Representatives were also invited from State Street Asset Management, Vanguard, Credit Suisse and Amundi.