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Florida’s senator Rubio engages in verbal duel with MSCI over the access by China’s A shares to American institutional funds
- Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio asked MSCI to explain why it added hundreds of Chinese stocks to its benchmark emerging markets index last year and increased their weighting this year
- The moves paved the way for billions of dollars in investments and retirement-savings to flow to Chinese companies, Rubio said
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Global index provider MSCI is pushing back against criticism by US Senator Marco Rubio that it’s helping funnel billions of Americans’ investment dollars into Chinese companies linked to human rights abuses and national security threats.
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“Currently there is no US law or regulation that prohibits an index company from creating an index containing China’s A [shares] or US investors from trading in the China [A shares] market,” MSCI’s Chief Executive Officer Henry Fernandez said in a letter seen by Bloomberg. China’s [A shares] are open to buying and selling by foreign investors.
Fernandez wrote in a response to questions from Rubio about the index’s composition that inclusion isn’t based on “subjective judgment regarding the company’s intrinsic value or basic practices,” but on standardised attributes such as company size and liquidity.
MSCI’s response comes after the Florida Republican sent a public letter asking the index provider for an explanation on why it added hundreds of Chinese stocks to its benchmark emerging markets index since last year and then increased the weighting to them this year. The moves paved the way for billions of dollars more in investments and retirement-savings to flow to Chinese companies.
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Some stocks in the index, such as Hangzhou Hikvision, have recently been placed on a US blacklist preventing business with American companies.
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