Yet another Barclays Global Investors (BGI) executive jumped ship for WisdomTree Investments recently, as Todd Westby joined the upstart exchange-traded fund (ETF) provider as its new director of national accounts.  At BGI, Westby helped set and develop strategy for the iShares family of ETFs.

Westby joins his former colleague Bruce Lavine, who stepped down last month as European head of BGI to become President and COO of WisdomTree.  Westby will be working under another former colleague from BGI - sales head Ray DeAngelo, who joined WisdomTree last year from his position as director of institutional sales and marketing at BGI.

Other BGI execs who have made the leap from the largest ETF provider in the world to the hottest upstart in the ETF space include senior counsel Richard Morris, who was senior counsel at BGI and had been involved in the development of the iShares family of funds from the beginning.

What's making all these executives leave the safety of their posts at BGI for the uncertainty of a start-up?  A belief that WisdomTree's dividend-screening methodology can outpace conventional market-cap weighting and - as CEO Jonathan Steinberg said on the launch of the first 20 WisdomTree ETFs last Friday - "change the way investors think about indexing and investing."

After one week on the market, WisdomTree's 20 ETFs have already had more than $300 million in assets, in total.  The two most popular funds are the WisdomTree DIEFA ETF (DWM), which tracks dividend-paying companies in Europe, and the WisdomTree Total Dividend Fund (DTD), which tracks dividend-paying stocks in the U.S.  Both funds currently have close to $25 million in assets.

That strong launch hasn't done much to help the company's stock, however: After reaching an intraday high of $6.25/share on June 5, the stock has tumbled to just $4.10/share, on what appears to be a classic "sell-the-news" phenomenon.