The head of iShares– the world’s top provider of exchange traded funds – has poured cold water on plans from MSCI and FTSE to include mainland Chinese equities on their global indices, which are tracked by trillions of dollars of assets.
Mark Wiedman, iShares global chief and a member of BlackRock’s executive committee, told the Financial Times that without a significant opening of China’s capital account, adding Shanghai-listed shares – known as A shares – to widely followed indices would be in effect unworkable.
“The index has to be executable for it to be effective for clients, and that is the big issue when people talk about A-share inclusion. Not until you have capital account liberalisation does it make any sense for our clients,” said Mr Wiedman. “A-share inclusion feels like [it is] not on the very near-term horizon.”