Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, may expand its exchange- traded funds to include commodities such as precious metals. Assets in the bank’s existing 24 Zurich-listed ETFs for bonds and global equity indexes totaled about 7.8 billion Swiss francs ($7.6 billion) as of Sept. 24, said Thomas Merz, head of marketing and distribution at the bank’s asset management unit. “We’re exploring various options and we’re looking into commodities including precious metals,” Merz said today by phone from Zurich, where the bank is based. “The bank has not decided which commodity will come out first.” Investment flows into commodity products advanced to $2.63 billion last month, at least double the amount recorded for any August, Barclays Capital said Sept. 10. Exchange-traded products attracted $1.74 billion, according to the bank. Ten gold ETFs tracked by UBS AG held a combined 55.61 million ounces on Sept. 25, according to the bank, worth about $55 billion at today’s prices. The metal reached $1,024.28 an ounce last week in London, 0.8 percent away from the all-time high of $1,032.70 reached in March 2008. The UBS Bloomberg CMCI index of 26 commodities returned almost 23 percent this year, beating the 16 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the 2.6 percent drop in U.S. Treasuries estimated by Merrill Lynch. Glencore International AG, the world’s largest commodity trader, and Credit Suisse started an oil-trading alliance in 2006, which has expanded into metals, emissions and freight. Industrial metals will be the “next step” for physical commodities products, Kamal Naqvi, global head of commodity sales to institutions at Credit Suisse, said at a conference in London on Sept. 24. He didn’t specifically refer to his own firm. Industrial metals include copper and aluminum. To contact the reporters on this story: Chanyaporn Chanjaroen in London at cchanjaroen@bloomberg.net

Source