MSCI has announced that it will include China A shares in its widely followed MSCI Emerging Markets and MSCI ACWI indices from June 2018. Remy Briand, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Policy Committee at MSCI, said, “International investors have embraced the positive changes in the accessibility of the China A shares market over the last few years and now all conditions are set for MSCI to proceed with the first step of the inclusion.”

Smart beta ETF provider Ossiam has announced it is implementing changes to the Ossiam US Minimum Variance ETF to include ESG screening and switch from synthetic to physical replication. As a result, the name of the ETF will change to Ossiam US Minimum Variance ESG ETF (LON: USMV).

UBS Asset Management has launched the UBS Bloomberg Commodity CMCI UCITS ETF (BCCU) on the London Stock Exchange. The fund offers exposure to the performance of a basket of commodity futures contracts, as represented by the constituent weights of the widely followed Bloomberg Commodity Index, while pursuing an advanced futures rolling methodology.

First Trust has launched a series of new ETFs on NASDAQ. Six of the new funds are smart beta equity strategies and one invests in California municipal debt.

Guggenheim has launched a new US equity smart beta ETF that applies a multi-factor approach to select stocks from the S&P 500 Index. The ETF will give exposure to 50 stocks from the underlying index that exhibit strong factor characteristics.

Lyxor has opted to close the US dollar share class on six of its European-listed ETFs. After the action, the C-EUR share class will continue to trade, having absorbed remaining assets within the C-USD share class.

Credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has announced that MSCI’s decision to include China A-Shares into its MSCI Emerging Markets Index is positive for inflows into Chinese equity markets.

Amundi has cross-listed three equity and two fixed income ETFs on LSE. The equity ETFs are the Amundi MSCI North America UCITS ETF (NRAM), the Amundi MSCI World UCITS ETF (MWRD) and Amundi FTSE EPRA NAREIT Global UCITS ETF (EPRA), while the fixed income ETFs are the Amundi Index JP Morgan GBI Global Govies UCITS ETF (GGOV) and Amundi Index Barclays Global AGG 500M UCITS ETF (GGAG).

European digital investment manager Scalable Capital has signed a €30 million funding round which sees BlackRock, the asset manager behind the iShares range of ETFs, become a significant minority stake owner in the firm.

FTSE Russell has posted its official preliminary lists of companies set to enter or leave its Russell US Indices ahead of their annual rebalance after markets close on 23 June 2017.