BlackRock has launched a China A-share exchange-traded fund (ETF) for international retail and institutional investors.
The iShares MSCI China A Ucits ETF opened this morning on the London Stock Exchange and claims to be the only Ucits fund to track this the MSCI China A index.
A-shares are companies incorporated in mainland China and listed on the Shanghai and Shenzen exchanges and make up 45.6 per cent the MSCI China All Shares index.
They are only available to non-Chinese investors within a strict quota framework. Investors in this ETF can gain access via BlackRock’s own Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) quota – a licence it was granted last June.
The fund is a physical ETF, which holds the actual underlying stocks, and is comprised a broad basket of over 300 large and mid-cap companies.
It has a total expense ratio of 65 basis points.
BlackRock’s Tom Fekete, head of product for iShares in EMEA, said: “Investor interest in China is high and shows no sign of abating. The world’s second largest economy is increasingly opening its stock market to greater foreign investment, and this ETF provides investors with a new option for accessing Chinese shares.
“We selected the MSCI index very carefully for its diversified basket of A-shares, and built the ETF using the physical replication model that investors tell us they prefer.”
