Dubai: Russell Investments, the Seattle-based fund manager that manages $2 trillion (Dh7 trillion) worth global assets and $155 billion investments under management is planning to open its office in Dubai and launch regional indices that will include top UAE companies, a senior company official said last week.
"We are planning to open an office in Dubai either towards the end to this quarter or in early next quarter. We are seeking partnership with both Dubai Financial Market and Abu Dhabi Securities Excange to launch a pan-Arab index," said Pascal Duval, Executive Managing Director of Russell Investments for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Negotiations
Russell signed a deal with the Saudi Tadawul stock exchange in the third quarter of last year that allows the company to offer Russell Indexes on the Saudi market. The company is currently in negotiations with Saudi authorities to include Saudi stocks in its index.
The Russell Indexes calculate over 50,000 benchmarks daily covering 65 countries and more than 10,000 securities. Russell officials said that despite the huge investment opportunities available in the region, the regional markets still are not included in Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) emerging market indices. The absence of these markets from the emerging market universe keeps the regional markets mostly out of the investment raddar of global fund managers.
By launching new regional indices and including them its emerging market category Russell which provides investment advice to a vast universe of institutional investors, plans to expose the opportunities in the Middle East to global investors.
