Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Beyond BRICS: "A CIVETS index: herding cats?"

From the Financial Times' Beyondbrics blog:
Among the post-BRIC acronyms competing to encapsulate the prospects of other chunks of the emerging world, CIVETS is gaining the most ground. 
On Tuesday, S&P joined the bandwagon by launching S&P CIVETS 60 – a tradeable index of 50 stocks from the next-generation EMs of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa. Even more of a mixed bag than the BRIC quartet of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But CIVETS equities have outperformed the BRICs in recent years. And for investors, that’s what counts.

Invented by the Economist Intelligence Unit and taken up last year by HSBC, CIVETS has a decent pedigree.  Michael Orzano, Associate Director of Global Equity Indices at S&P Indices, said in a statement:
With reasonably sophisticated financial systems and rapidly maturing equity markets, the six CIVETS countries show all the signs of becoming increasingly important to international investors. …The launch of this Index underlines the leadership we’ve shown in building out our family of emerging/frontier market and BRIC indices over the last decade.
The index is composed of 10 liquid stocks in each of the six countries, headed by South Africa’s Sasol energy group and MTN telecommunications company, Indonesia’s Astra combine, and Turkiye Garanti Bankasi, the Turkish bank....MORE