China ‘A’ shares get MSCI nod, Argentina snubbed | Reuters

By Dion Rabouin | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. index provider MSCI said on Tuesday it would add mainland Chinese stocks to one of its key benchmarks, but shocked many emerging market investors by failing to upgrade Argentina from the frontier market category where it has languished in recent years.MSCI also said it would consult investors about adding Saudi Arabia to the benchmark and that Nigeria would remain a frontier market, with the possibility of being downgraded to "standalone" status.The full inclusion of domestic Chinese stocks in the widely tracked MSCI Emerging Markets Index .MSCIEF could pull more than $400 billion of funds from asset managers, pension funds and insurers into mainland China's equity markets over the next decade, according to analysts.BlackRock Inc (BLK.N), the world's largest asset manager, endorsed MSCI's decision."We believe our clients will benefit from today's decision to bring Chinese equities into mainstream investment," said Ryan Stork, BlackRock's chairman for Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong and one of the company's most senior executives, in an emailed statement."BlackRock has continued to support all opening of investment in China's onshore capital markets for a number of years."The decision not to reclassify Argentina as an emerging market surprised investors. The country's shares will remain in the smaller frontier markets index, where it has been since 2009."We think Argentina could be initially hit, because the expectation for the inclusion was pretty high," said Lucy Qiu, emerging market analyst at UBS Wealth Management in New York

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