iShares to Introduce EM Corporate Bond ETF Thursday

By far the most prolific issuer of new ETFs in 2012, BlackRock's BLK iShares unit, the world's largest ETF sponsor, will introduce another new bond ETF on Thursday when the iShares Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund CEMB debuts. The iShares Emerging markets Corporate Bond Fund will be the latest iShares offering to list on the BATS Exchange. CEMB will track the Morningstar Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Index and feature dollar-denominate issues. Eligible individual securities must have a minimum outstanding face value of $500 million or more, and eligible issuers must have aggregate outstanding debt of $1 billion or more to be included in the index and a remaining maturity of 13 months or more at the time of rebalancing and a minimum of 36 months to maturity or greater at time of issuance, according to ETF Daily News. While there are no ratings restrictions for the issues to be included in the index, the bonds must have at least one rating from Fitch, Moody's or Standard & Poor's. With heavy weights to energy, financial services names, the underlying index features issuers from Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. CEMB will have an expense ratio of 0.6% and compete directly with the wildly popular WisdomTree Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund EMCB, which has raked in almost $60 million in AUM since debuting on March 8.