Boston, MA 10/24/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The global financial solutions provider JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has now launched a new emerging market fixed income to be known as the J.P. Morgan Middle East Composite Index (MECI).
This composite index captures the Middle East USD-denominated debt market and it covers sovereign, corporate and quasi-sovereign issuers.
This new addition to the JPM fixed income index family has a market value of $156.5 billion and represents 73% of the Middle East USD external debt asset class. The index spans 10 countries and includes 61 issuers and 167 instruments.
After several years of prolific issuance, JPM has now come to consider Middle East as an increasingly important emerging market debt component. According to the JPM Head of International Credit Research, MECI will be a versatile and comprehensive benchmarking tool for the global and domestic investors in the Middle East bonds.
As customary, the new MECI’s methodology represents that of the global JPM emerging markets bond index as well as corporate emerging markets bonds index which are widely viewed as the benchmarks for investors in the USD emerging markets and corporate bonds.
The JPM’s new MECI contains Lebanon, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Israel, Iraq, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. MECI selects issuers that are based in these Middle East regions.
Basically, MECI in a very big and versatile way continues the premier and legacy index products developed by JPM for the purposes of developing emerging markets. As such, MECI will consist of the regularly traded, floating rate and liquid fixed instruments featuring minimum face value outstanding in the region of $300 million with 5 years of maturity.
By opening up this emerging market trading opportunity, investors with interest in the Middle East have everything to be excited, particularly considering that this is a program backed by a reputable institution in matters finance and emerging indices trading. JPM has strong presence in more than 100 countries globally and holds $19.2 trillion in assets with $357 billion in deposits
