Russell Adds Mega Cap Emerging Markets Indexes

January 24, 2011 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – Russell Investments has launched two new emerging markets indexes.

A news release said the Russell Emerging Markets Mega Cap Growth Index and Russell Emerging Markets Mega Cap Value Index capture the risk and return profile of mega cap securities in emerging markets.

According to the announcement, Russell’s examination of style differentiation in emerging markets shows that these stocks have exhibited performance and potential portfolio diversification benefits similar to Russell’s U.S. and Developed value and growth indexes. For example, there are clear value and growth cycles similar to the value and growth cycles seen in U.S. and developed markets.

In addition, the news release said, there are periods when the market capitalization of emerging markets have been allocated more to value than to growth, countering the common perception that emerging markets are solely growth markets and thus style characteristics are not as distinguished as in developed markets.

Russell also announced that the firm has entered into a licensing agreement with Global X Funds to create exchange-traded funds (ETFs) benchmarked to Russell’s Emerging Markets style indexes. ETFs in registration include the Global X Russell Emerging Markets Growth ETF and the Global X Russell Emerging Markets Value ETF.

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