JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) will withdraw Russian bonds from its indices following other high-profile trackers out of the Russian debt market.
From 31 March, Russia will be locked out of EMBI indices, which track sovereign hard-currency indices, as well as JPMorgan’s GBI-EM index for local debt in emerging currencies and JESG index covering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
Russian and Belarusian debt will also be excluded from the bank’s high-profile trackers, including JESG EMBI, JESG GBI-EM, and JESG CEMBI indices.
Yesterday, JPMorgan had polled investors on the potential to exclude Russian bonds from its indices.
Global assets worth $842 billion are benchmarked against JPMorgan's indexes, according to the bank.
Russia has a weighting of 0.69% in the EMBIG Global Diversified index, and 1.84% in the GBI-EM Global Diversified gauge.
Index providers MSCI and FTSE Russell took similar decisions last week as sanctions begin to weigh on Russian assets.