Chinese fund managers face the problem of how to benchmark their portfolios. Fed up with waiting for the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges to put aside regional rivalries and develop a unified index, Beijing-based Citic Securities has jumped into the fray itself.
Lacking a methodical way to compare risk-adjusted performance among different strategies, Citic Securities has developed its own family of indices, initially for in-house investments. But it has soon found its products in high demand. Currently 15 out of the 19 existing domestic fund management companies in China actively use Citic products to either structure or benchmark their portfolios.
The Citic Securities indices were developed according to internationally accepted standards devised by MSCI and...