Paolo Giulianini, Head of Equity Benchmarks, Banca IMI said: “We are pleased to launch the first product utilizing the EMTXi, the first real-time index of inflation-linked government bonds of the eurozone, which allows our customers to access in an easy way the expanding market of these securities.”
Mr. Wolfgang Eder, Legal Risk Manager for Global Financial Markets, Erste Bank said: “We are pleased to launch this product based on a basket of the most representative indices of several markets. The use of the EuroMTS index offers an efficient and transparent way to link the product to the eurozone government bond market.”
Scott Stark, CEO of MTSNext commented: “Since the launch of our EMTXi index in June, we have seen the index adopted by fund managers for use as a benchmark and are now seeing it used as the basis of financial products for the retail market. In addition, the launch of this first structured product using a EuroMTS index in Austria provides further evidence of the wide recognition of the characteristics of representation, transparency and tradability of these indices across Europe.”
The EuroMTS Index, formerly the CNO Etrix, was acquired by EuroMTS in January 2003 and has since been extended to include real-time pricing with two daily fixings. It is composed of a global index (Eurozone sovereigns) and six maturity-band sub-indices. The EuroMTS indices family also includes the EuroMTS Inflation-Linked Bonds Index (EMTXi) and the EuroMTS New EU Index (EMTXn) of euro-denominated bonds issued by the new members of the European Union. The EMTXi incorporates eurozone issues quoted on MTS - the reference market in Europe for fixed income securities - with more than €2 billion in outstanding size and at least one year to maturity. The index, comprised of the entire range of inflation-linked securities listed on the EuroMTS Linkers Market, currently includes one Greek, three Italian and eight French inflation-linked bonds. The EMTXi was designed to accurately represent the eurozone inflation-linked bond market and to be homogenous with the existing EuroMTS Index family.
The EuroMTS Indices are used as benchmarks by over 200 institutions with an estimated €200 billion in assets referenced to the indices. Several structured products have been issued in France and Italy using the EuroMTS Indices and three ETFs are currently listed on the Euronext and Borsa Italia exchanges, with over €590 million in assets under management. All EuroMTS Indices are designed to ensure optimal representation and transparency.
Additional information in respect of the EuroMTS Indices, including underlying bond prices and historical index data, is available on www.euromtsindex.com and through market data vendors (Bloomberg “EMTS”