BlackRock’s BRIC ETF will change its name to BIC after index provider FTSE Russell deleted Russian equities from the index.
It comes as FTSE Russell, which removed all Russian securities from its equity indices on 7 March last year, updated the name of the FTSE BRIC 50 Net of Tax index to the FTSE BIC 50 Net of Tax index to reflect the changes.
As a result, the iShares BRIC 50 UCITS ETF (BRIC) will be renamed the iShares BIC 50 UCITS ETF.
The term ‘BRIC’ stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China and is a term first coined by Goldman Sachs’ former head of global economics research Baron Jim O’Neill in 2001 as an attempt to bunch together the ‘Big Four’ of emerging markets.
Despite this, BRIC is now the only ETF left tracking the investment thesis, one of six products that have survived the last decade due to underperformance, high fees and Russian securities becoming inaccessible last year.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought the onset of financial sanctions, making it difficult to access Russian equities or Global Depository Receipts (GDR) – previously used by the FTSE BRIC 50 Net of Tax index – targeting them.
BRIC, which houses $125m assets under management (AUM), currently has an 84.4% weighting to China, a 13.3% weighting to Brazil and just a 1.4% allocation to India.
The ETF has returned -35.3% over the past five years, as at the end of May, and -3.7% since its inception in 2007.
