MSCI announces changes to indexes

dubai — US index provider MSCI announced changes to a number of its index funds on Monday, adding 55 securities and removing 34 from its World Index.MSCI upgraded Dubai’s DXB Entertainments to its UAE index and deleted Dubai Financial Market, while moving Arabtec down from the standard index to its small cap index.

Arqaam Capital estimated this would cause net passive inflows of $65 million into DXB, and outflows of $40 million from Arabtec and $34 million from DFM.

MSCI also downgraded Vodafone Qatar to its small cap index while adding Qatar First Bank to that index; Arqaam estimated net outflows of $48 million due to Vodafone and an inflow of $2 million due to Qatar First.

Fifteen stocks were added to the MSCI Saudi Arabia Index, including Advanced Petrochemicals, Al Tayyar Travel and Saudi British Bank.

In Egypt, Alexandria Mineral Oils was added to MSCI’s small cap index and Amer Group, Arabian Cement and Qalaa Holdings deleted, although Arqaam said this would cause only very minor passive fund flows. The three largest additions measured by full company market capitalization will be Denmark’s Dong Energy, the US’ First Data Corporation and France’s Dassault Aviation.

MSCI also announced changes to its emerging markets index and added 44 new securities and leted three from its China A index. The largest Chinese companies added were China Film Corporation, China Grand Automotive Services and Cultural Investment Holdings.

To its emerging markets index, MSCI added China Huarong Asset Management, Chinese ADR Weibo Corporation and Brazil’s Electrobras.

Updates were also announced to MSCI’s frontier markets index, including the three largest: Sonatel (Senegal), Pampa Energia ADR (Argentina) and Bank Dhofar (Oman) .

The changes were part of quarterly adjustments MSCI makes to its indexes, which it says are tracked by $9.5 trillion in assets.

The index fund updates will be implemented at market close on November 30.