Barclays Introduces Two New International ETFs

The two international Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) add to the largest international ETF product line in the US, provided by Barclays.   According to the release, the international iShares funds were comprised of 35 funds with total assets of over $43 billion as of August 1.

Employers are increasingly looking to ETFs to meet diversification needs and gain exposure to assets that promise a higher return than traditional securities (See  Special Report: ETFs: A Valuable Commodity ).   ETFs provide ease of trading and lower cost.

The MSCI EAFE Value and Growth Indices are subsets of the MSCI EAFE Index and constituents include securities from Europe, Australasia and the Far East, according to the release.   MSCI uses a specialized framework to attribute both value and growth style factors to the MSCI EAFE Index constituents, which are then used to calculate a value score and growth score. Based upon these two scores, MSCI determines the extent to which each security is assigned to the value or growth index.

The release notes that investors can purchase and sell shares of any iShares fund through any brokerage firm, financial advisor, or online broker, and hold the funds in any type of brokerage account.

“With the addition of EFV and EFG, investors now have even greater flexibility when investing internationally combined with the asset allocation precision and cost efficiency of iShares ETFs,” said Lisa Chen, senior international portfolio manager at Barclays Global Investors, in the release.