Longevity winners index

Research, rating and index company E Capital Partner Indices (ECPI), which focuses on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, has launched a longevity index consisting of stocks that are set to profit from demographic changes.

With the section of the population aged 60 or over expected to nearly double in the most developed regions, the Global Longevity Winners Equity index is designed to select 36 companies that operate in sectors that will benefit from a sharp increase in life expectancy in developed countries.

ECPI has selected six sectors that are better positioned to profit from an increase in life expectancy and in the number of elderly population, namely financial/insurance, healthcare/big pharma, healthcare/medical, and in real estate, consumer and technology/industrial.

The company has applied traditional financial filters of minimum market capitalisation, trading volumes and sector concentration to the index to ensure hedgeability for intermediaries and a proper index diversification.

But ECPI has also applied its own ESG screening methodology to single out companies holding the highest unexpressed intangible value.

Global currency indices

Investment decision support tools provider MSCI Barra has developed new currency indices.

The MSCI Global Currency indices reflect the performance of both the currency and interest rate returns of developed and emerging market currencies in regional or composite MSCI equity indices.

The weighting of each currency is proportionate to the relevant country’s weight in the corresponding MSCI equity index, which aims to enable institutional investors to measure the total investment performance of foreign currencies within an equity portfolio tracking an MSCI equity index.

The indices may be licensed for use for portfolio management and benchmarking purposes, as well as to serve as the basis of structured products and other index-linked investment vehicles such as ETFs.

US ESG corporate bond indexes

A US corporate bond (USCB) index series has been launched that applies environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance to US fixed income.

The KLD USCB series - a product of collaboration by ESG research and index provider KLD Research and Analytics, fixed income architect Ryan ALM and fixed income data and calculation agent Mergent - covers three maturity parameters with one-to-three year, one-to-five year, and one-to-10 year indexes.

To construct the USCB10 and USCB5 indexes, KLD evaluates the ESG performance of the largest 1,000 publicly traded companies in the US. Ryan then selects companies from the top quartile of ESG performers that issue investment-grade debt within the maturity parameters of each index and meet specific liquidity criteria.

The USCB3 index includes companies ranked in KLD’s first and second quartiles of ESG performers whose issues are within the one-to-three year maturity parameter.

All indices are equal weighted and no issuer may exceed 5% of the total value of the index.

Kuwait ETF

A new exchange-traded fund (ETF) focussing on Kuwait has been created by ETF provider Lyxor Asset Management and Coast Investment & Development Company, a Gulf-based financial institution.

The Lyxor ETF Kuwait will be linked to the FTSE Coast Kuwait 40 Index, which is representative of the Kuwaiti market. The Index is calculated by index provider FTSE on behalf of Coast Investment and Development Company and was established in February 2007. Its three main sector constituents are banking, at 32%, IT and telecoms, 22%, and investments at 17%.

This follows a new Lyxor survey which revealed that 45% of interviewed institutional investors believe that over the next five years, stock market returns in the Gulf region will be good or excellent, with only 4% expecting them to be poor.