Venture born as China is set to launch new equity products
Standard & Poor's and state-owned Citic Securities yesterday announced the formation of a joint venture to develop indices for the mainland securities market.
The new venture comes as China prepares for the introduction of new products including index-based futures and a new futures exchange.
The firm, Standard & Poor's/Citic Index Service, is a 50-50 joint venture but will be run mostly by Standard & Poor's.
'Our business model is very much working with financial institutions to build products that use indices, like index futures and options, index swaps, index funds and exchange-traded funds,' said Bob Shakotko, managing director of index services at Standard & Poor's.
'We believe the Chinese equity market is at the point of doing more in this area.'
