Pennsylvania Retirement Plan Sues to Halt Merrill Lynch Sale

The board managing York County, Pennsylvania’s employee retirement plan is trying to stop the $50 billion sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.

The York Dispatch reports that the retirement board last week gave the go-ahead for a class-action lawsuit filed Friday, alleging that Merrill Lynch shareholders would be hurt if the sale goes through. The proposed $29-per share sale to Bank of America would cost the county’s retirement plan several hundred thousand dollars, said Mark Gensheimer, an executive vice president with Pittsburgh-based investment firm C.S. McKee, which manages a portion of the county’s plan, in the news report.

The county says in the lawsuit that the proposed share sale price undervalues Merrill Lynch and asks for a halt of the sale, among other requests.

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As of August 31, the retirement plan had about $929,400 invested in Merrill Lynch stock, according to information provided to the newspaper by the county controller’s office. The stock’s market value at that point was about $590,000, which was based on $28.35 per share.

MSCI Barra Unveils Frontier Emerging Markets Benchmarks

MSCI Barra launched the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets Index and a more tradable proxy for this benchmark, the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets APEX Index.

An MSCI news release said the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets Index is designed to serve as a benchmark covering all countries from the MSCI Frontier Markets Index and the lower size spectrum of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which tends to be less correlated with developed markets.

In addition to the countries from the MSCI Frontier Markets Index, the following countries from the MSCI Emerging Markets Index will be included: Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, and the Philippines, the news release said.

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The MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets APEX Index includes all constituent countries of the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets Index except those countries with material restrictions related to foreign exchange operations, material capital controls, or countries with very low liquidity in the local market and for which no liquid foreign listings exist.

The following constituent countries of the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets Index will not be included in the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets APEX Index: Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

“Frontier markets are typically characterized by limited market accessibility, small company size, and low liquidity, while emerging markets are usually expected to provide higher levels of openness, investability and efficiency of the operational framework,” explained Giacomo Fachinotti, executive director and head of the MSCI Index Policy Committee, in the release. “However, some characteristics of smaller emerging markets may resemble those of frontier markets. For example, smaller emerging markets typically have few global companies and are less likely to be widely owned and researched, resulting in lower correlation with larger markets.”


More information is available here.

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