FBN Holdings, Ecobank to exit MSCI frontier markets index

FBN Holdings plc and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated plc (ETI) are two Nigerian Stock Exchange-listed stocks that will exit the MSCI frontier markets index by November 26.

MSCI is a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community.
The exit of ETI and FBN Holdings follows changes in the constituents of the frontier index as announced by MSCI Inc., a leading provider of research-based indexes and analytics.

Sources tell BusinessDay that the stocks were removed from the index because their market capitalisation had fallen below a certain threshold.

The exiting stocks have far underperformed the NSE benchmark index (-16.68 percent) year-to-date (ytd).  ETI at N7 per share has lost 50 percent of its year open value while FBN Holdings at N5.45 per share has decreased this year by 31.3 percent.

MSCI Frontier Markets Indexes will witness four additions and eight deletions from the index.

The three largest additions to the MSCI Frontier Markets Index measured by full company market capitalisation will be Nova Ljubljanska Banka (Slovenia), Ho Chi Minh City Dev Bank (Vietnam) and Commercial Bank Ceylon (Sri Lanka). There will be 13 additions to and 17 deletions from the MSCI Frontier Markets Small Cap Index.

The announced results of the November 2019 Semi-Annual Index Review for the MSCI Equity Indexes include the MSCI Global Standard, MSCI Global Small Cap and MSCI Micro Cap Indexes, the MSCI Global Value and Growth Indexes, the MSCI Frontier Markets and MSCI Frontier Markets Small Cap Indexes.

Others are the MSCI Global Islamic and MSCI Global Islamic Small Cap Indexes, the MSCI Pan-Euro and MSCI Euro Indexes, the MSCI US Equity Indexes, the MSCI US REIT Index, the MSCI China A indexes and the MSCI China All Shares Indexes.

All changes will be implemented as of the close of November 26, 2019.

Iheanyi Nwachukwu