The California-based Wilshire Consulting firm recommended that the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) target Israel, Turkey, Jordan and Morocco as emerging markets for stock investments. The $133 billion fund is the largest public pension fund in the US, with $1.8 billion invested in emerging markets assets.
At the same time Wilshire advised to exclude Egypt from the list of potential stock investment sites. Israel was ranked overall third out of the 27 countries examined, Jordan was 10th, Turkey 13th and Morocco 17th. Jordan and Morocco were added to the list for the first time.
The ‘Permissible Equity Markets Investment Analysis and Recommendations’ is a 59-page annual report conducted by Wilshire specifically for CalPERS since 1987. It aims to provide a framework for evaluating a market's ability to support institutional investment.
The analysis gives equal weight to country factors—namely political stability, transparency and labor practices— and to market factors, which include market liquidity and volatility, market regulation and investor protection, capital market openness and settlement proficiency and transaction costs. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
