Graham Tuckwell admits he could have taken the $600 million-plus that his ETF Securities made from the sales of its offshore businesses last year, "stuck it in a portfolio of exchange-traded funds and gone to the beach" — were it not for the opportunity he still saw in ETF-shunning Australia.

Less than 10 per cent of the turnover on the Australian Securities Exchange today is due to exchange-traded funds, the no-commission, low-fee alternative to traditional actively managed funds, which Mr Tuckwell pioneered in 2003 with the launch of a listed product tracking the gold price.