Russia to Be Excluded from JPMorgan Fixed-Income Indexes

An investors' poll took place over the weekend about the matter.

JPMorgan put Russia on index watch on March 1.

JPMorgan surveyed investors on the possibility of including Russia's local and hard currency debt in its benchmarks over the weekend. In a “Survey Monkey” poll seen by Reuters, Wall Street bank asked whether sovereign and corporate bonds and securities denominated in hard currency and roubles should be retained or removed.

Those anticipating that securities will be removed are asked about their preferred timing - at the end of March or the end of April. The bank runs a family of hard-currency sovereign indexes called EMBI, as well as a corporate debt index called CEMBI. In addition, there is the GBI-EM benchmark for local debt in emerging currencies and JESG, which is based on environmental, social, and governance factors.

Based on bank information, assets worth $842 billion are benchmarked against those indexes. The EMBIG Diversified index of the bank weights Russia at 0.89% and the ESG version has an even higher weighted rating of 1.03%. It is also being investigated whether or not the debt from Russian ally Belarus should be removed from JPMorgan's ESG index series.