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It is a fund that lets Americans buy a basket of big British companies in one cheap trade.
This is not really a company in the usual sense. It is a fund — a big pool of money that buys shares of many companies and then sells tiny slices of that pool to investors. This one, the Franklin FTSE United Kingdom ETF, trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker FLGB, and its whole job is to own the stocks that make up the FTSE United Kingdom Index — basically the biggest and most liquid UK-listed companies, like banks, oil majors, drugmakers, and consumer brands. It is run by Franklin Resources, a large US asset manager headquartered in California, but the money inside it is spread across the UK.
Who pays? Regular investors, financial advisors, and institutions who want exposure to the UK stock market without buying dozens of individual British shares. The fund charges a very small annual fee — around 0.09% — which is its main selling point versus older, more expensive UK ETFs. The fund makes no products itself; it simply tracks an index, collecting dividends from the UK companies it holds and passing them along to shareholders. Think of it as a pre-made sandwich platter from a supermarket: you don't pick each ingredient, but you get a decent, cheap, ready-made assortment.
Franklin launched this "FL" family of single-country ETFs in 2017 as a low-cost challenge to established players like iShares and Vanguard. The fund is passive — no star manager picking winners — and its value rises and falls with UK stocks and currency swings between the pound and the dollar. It distributes dividends, and its size, around a billion dollars, makes it big enough to trade easily but small compared to the giant UK ETF from iShares. If you want to bet on Britain without the hassle of London trading hours, this is one of the cheapest ways to do it.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026