Morgan Stanley Capital International said it was launching the first phase of its new Country Industry Index (CII) module in April, which is says is a new flexible sector-based approach to country indices.
Phase one would see the existing CII replaced by a more flexible product based on MSCI’s new Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), it says. The new CII module enables global and regional equity managers to analyse portfolio performance and test investment strategies based on sector, industry and industry group effects.
CII clients, said MSCI, would be among the first to benefit from its GICS tool, which provided investors with a far better reflection of the current world model. The second phase of the new CII module would introduce underlying information in the form of daily total returns and more performance history data, said MSCI.