Lee Kranefuss

Who is Lee Kranefuss?

Lee Thomas Kranefuss is an American businessman, investment manager, corporate adviser and entrepreneur.

Kranefuss started and ran the iShares series of exchange-traded funds for Barclays Global Investors, the asset management arm of Britain’s Barclays Bank. BGI was acquired by BlackRock in December 2009. Kranefuss saw the opportunity to commercialize and grow the extant but immaterial ETF industry that had developed by the time iShares was launched in 2000, and is credited with driving ETFs from a novelty product to a mainstream investment choice through aggressive education and promotion of the iShares line. By the end of 2009, global ETF assets exceeded a trillion dollars globally, with nearly half the total in the iShares funds.