FTSE today announced that it had added Malaysia on the country Watch List for its FTSE Global Equity Index Series: Advanced Emerging. According to FTSE, adding a market to the Watch List is the first signal to the international investment community that FTSE is considering a change of status for a market within its indices. Malaysia will be on this Watch List for the next one year to enable the index provider to review the market against FTSE's quality of markets criteria for Advanced Emerging status. Malaysia is currently a Secondary Emerging market.
Dato' Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia Berhad said that the Exchange, together with key capital market stakeholders had, for many years, taken concerted joint efforts to build towards an efficient, liberal and liquid capital market.
"Over the years, we have tirelessly engaged with the international investor community, rating agencies and index providers such as FTSE on our efforts to improve our capital market. That is why, this acknowledgement is rewarding as it is indeed a reflection of the effort Malaysia and all our stakeholders have taken in ensuring that we move towards achieving a developed equities market. This good news is certainly a positive incentive for us to accelerate our capital market development initiatives to ensure that we indeed attain the Advanced Emerging status within the next twelve months."
Please refer to FTSE's Global Equity Index Series - Country Classification
update on FTSE's website from www.ftse.com/country.