Index provider MSCI said it would drop seven companies that the US government has labelled as having ties to the Chinese military from its indices, after President Donald Trump barred US investors from holding stakes in such companies.
MSCI said the seven — which included SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker — would be removed from its global equity indices at the end of the trading day on January 5. The businesses will be dropped from MSCI’s popular emerging markets indices.
The decision has been keenly anticipated, given MSCI indices are the benchmark for many money managers who specialise in emerging markets. More than $12tn is invested in funds benchmarked to one of the company’s thousands of indices, according to MSCI.
Other large index providers including FTSE Russell, Nasdaq and S&P Global Dow Jones Indices have taken similar action to comply with an executive order signed by Mr Trump last month.
The order prohibited new transactions in shares of Chinese businesses that the Pentagon alleges have ties to the Chinese military from January 11 and gives existing shareholders until November 2021 to divest their holdings.
The companies MSCI had decided to remove include China Railway Construction Corporation, China Communications Construction Company and surveillance camera maker Hikvision. The company also plans to cut locomotive manufacturer CRRC, computer server maker Dawning Information Industry Group and satellite manufacturer China Spacesat.
MSCI said it had only removed companies explicitly named in the executive order and not subsidiaries or affiliated companies. The seven companies trade in China and Hong Kong and accounted for roughly 0.3 per cent of the value of the MSCI Emerging Markets Investable Market Index, which includes nearly 3,000 stocks.
The index provider said it had consulted with investors and found that even those outside the US warned the executive order would “significantly limit their ability to transact in the impacted securities”.
MSCI added it would launch new indices that do include the seven companies, for investors not affected by the order.
The Pentagon this year published three tranches of names of Chinese companies with alleged military links and Congress last week passed a defence spending bill that would force the Pentagon to annually publish a comprehensive directory, underscoring the growing bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill to take a tougher stance on China.
Mr Trump this year gave some of his more hawkish officials on China the green light to take tough actions towards Beijing. While Joe Biden could reverse many of those actions after he is inaugurated as president, his team has not outlined which measures he may jettison and which actions he will keep in place.
MSCI’s move marked a victory for the Trump administration, which earlier this year singled out one of its indices in its pressure campaign on China: the main US federal government retirement fund in May halted a plan to invest pension funds in Chinese companies via the MSCI All Country World ex-US Investable Market index.