MSCI To Consider Standalone Indices For Countries Of The Gulf Cooperation Council

MSCI, a leading provider of benchmark indices, announced that it is considering creating standalone and composite indices for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. These are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

MSCI has no plans to add any of these countries to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index at this time, since, among other reasons, these countries are either relatively small in terms of free float adjusted market capitalization and/or are not sufficiently open to foreign investment. A consultation document is available at www.msci.com/consultation. MSCI welcomes any feedback.