IWDA is the global one-fund core — developed markets everywhere, weighted by market cap, which today means about 70% United States. IMEU is a deliberate Europe overweight, and it only makes sense if you have a specific reason to bet on European large-caps over global market weight. If you don't have that reason, this comparison is short: hold IWDA and stop.
What they share
Both are Irish-domiciled UCITS ETFs from iShares. Both accumulate dividends inside the wrapper — no cash to redeploy, no tax event until you sell. Both replicate physically with optimised sampling: they hold a representative subset of the index rather than every name in the tail, which is standard for broad equity indices. Both list on the LSE and clear on Trade Republic and Scalable savings plans. The Ireland/US tax treaty applies to each, trimming withholding on their US dividend income — which matters far more to IWDA, since most of its dividends are American. On the wrapper and the tax plumbing, the two are interchangeable.
Where they differ
On cost, IMEU charges 0.12% and IWDA charges 0.20%. At a €50k position that's €60 versus €100 a year — IMEU is the cheaper fund, but the fee gap is not why anyone picks one over the other. The decision lives entirely in the index. (iShares' IMEU factsheet has the full breakdown.)
IWDA tracks MSCI World: about 1,400 large- and mid-cap stocks across 23 developed countries, weighted by market cap, which puts the United States at roughly 70% of the basket. Its top ten are all US mega-caps. IMEU tracks MSCI Europe: developed Europe only — no US, no Japan, no rest-of-world. That is the whole distinction. One fund is the global developed market; the other is one region of it.
The load-bearing point is overlap, and it runs one direction. IMEU's European names already sit inside IWDA — ASML, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Nestlé, SAP are MSCI World constituents too, just at low weights because Europe is the minority of global developed market cap. So buying IMEU on top of IWDA does not add companies you don't own; it re-weights companies you already own upward. IMEU is a tilt, not a diversifier.
Currency needs care. IMEU's base currency is EUR and IWDA's is USD, but the share-class currency is not your real exposure — that follows the underlying basket. IMEU's basket is European equities (EUR, GBP, CHF, and others), so it genuinely reduces dollar exposure. IWDA's basket is ~70% US, so it is dollar-dominated regardless of the ticker you buy. A Euro investor who wants less USD exposure gets it from IMEU's holdings, not from its EUR share class.
| | IMEU | IWDA | |---|---|---| | Index | MSCI Europe | MSCI World | | Coverage | Developed Europe only | 23 developed countries (~70% US) | | TER | 0.12% | 0.20% | | Distribution | Accumulating | Accumulating | | Base currency | EUR | USD |
Live data
Live data temporarily unavailable for this comparison.
Concentration tells the same story the coverage does — a regional basket versus a US-led global one:
| Ticker | Name | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| ASML | ASML Holding NV | 3.78% |
| AZN | AstraZeneca PLC | 2.27% |
| NVS | Novartis AG | 2.16% |
| HSBC | HSBC Holdings PLC | 2.08% |
| RHHBY | Roche Holding AG | 2.08% |
| Ticker | Name | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| NVDA | NVIDIA Corp | 5.30% |
| AAPL | Apple Inc | 4.67% |
| MSFT | Microsoft Corp | 3.27% |
| AMZN | Amazon.com Inc | 2.51% |
| GOOGL | Alphabet Inc Class A | 2.09% |
IMEU's top ten come to about 21% of the fund and are pure European large-cap — ASML at 3.78% on top, then healthcare (AstraZeneca, Novartis, Roche), banks (HSBC), energy (Shell, TotalEnergies) and staples (Nestlé). Not a single US name. IWDA's top ten sit at 25.2% and are entirely American mega-cap tech and finance. Same wrapper, opposite bets on where the next decade's returns come from.
Who each one is for
Buy IWDA if you want a global one-fund developed-market core and you're done. It's the default for a reason: one instrument, the whole developed world at market weight, no regional call to defend. The only caveat is that it holds no emerging markets — if that bothers you, that's a VWCE vs IWDA decision, not an IMEU one.
Buy IMEU only as a satellite — a deliberate Europe tilt on top of a global core. The single honest reason to hold it is a specific view that European large-caps will outperform global market weight, or a wish to correct the home bias the other way: dialling up Europe because you think IWDA's 70% US weighting is too much of a bet on America. That's a real position. Holding IMEU as your core, with no global fund underneath, is not — you'd be excluding roughly 80% of the developed world for no reason you could name. There's no third sensible use.