Russian bonds and equities face a potentially wider sell-off in the coming weeks as sanctions isolate banks and exporters and hurt the nation’s currency, prompting index compilers to remove affected securities from their global indices. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) said it would exclude sanctioned entity debt covered by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, UK or European Union from its fixed income indices from February 28. These would include any new debt issued by Russia’s central bank, sovereign wealth fund or the finance ministry. Any new issuance of sanctioned debt will be blocked, and any existing debt of blocked entities will be removed at the March 31 rebalancing. Examples include debt issued by state-owned lenders Vnesheconombank and VTB Bank, it added. “We will continue to monitor this list and may take additional action as further information is released,” it said in a statement on Monday. ICE, which owns the ICE BofA Index family and operates exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange, has separately confirmed that its equity indices contained no sanctioned entities from Russia or Belarus. Ukraine crisis: rouble plunges 30 per cent against US dollar as Moscow markets freeze on sanctions stress MSCI, which froze all Russian securities last week, is seeking feedback from market participants on whether to remove Russian stocks from its indices after reviewing its accessibility and investability, it said on Tuesday. More updates are due by the end of the week, it said. “Many asset managers are under pressure to unload Russian assets in their portfolios,” said Redmond Wong, market strategist at Saxo Markets. Removal from indices “will trigger large selling when the equity market potentially resumes trading next week.” The US and its allies removed certain Russian banks from the S wift international payment messaging system , and restricted trading in Russian stocks and bonds in international markets. The Moscow Exchange was also shut on Monday as the rouble plunged 30 per cent against the dollar. MSCI is seeking feedback on the appropriate treatment of the Russian equity market within its family of indices, up to and including the potential reclassification of the MSCI Russia indices from Emerging Markets to Standalone Markets status, it added. “It would not make a lot of sense for us to continue to include Russian securities if our clients and investors cannot transact in the market,” Reuters cited Dimitris Melas, MSCI’s head of index research and chair of the Index Policy Committee, as saying. “The market is very difficult to trade and, in fact, it is uninvestable today,” Melas added. Meanwhile, FTSE Russell on Friday said it was evaluating the impact of sanctions on its indices and would update its proposed treatment by the end of this week. It said on February 24 that none of the current constituents in the FTSE Russell Equity Indices falls within the scope of the sanctions on Russian individuals and entities.