Metro Pacific joins MSCI Philippines index, replaces SMC

MANILA, Philippines—Infrastructure holding firm Metro Pacific Investments has joined the closely tracked MSCI Philippines index, replacing conglomerate San Miguel Corp. effective May 31 this year.

MSCI also realigned the MSCI Global Small Cap Indices, with five new companies joining the index, all of which are not part of the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index: D&L Industries, EEI Corp., Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines Corp., RFM Corp. and San Miguel Purefoods.

Deleted from the small cap index were GT Capital Holdings, Megaworld Corp., Puregold Price Club, Robinsons Land Corp. and Security Bank Corp.

Any adjustment in a country’s weight could be attributed to the dynamics of prices, number of shares, movement in prices and free float factor of component companies. A cap of foreign ownership also has an impact of reducing maximum amount of shares that investors can buy.

As such, whenever the level of foreign ownership gets too close to the threshhold such that it’s impossible to buy new shares, MCSI mitigates the effect by cutting the weight of that company in the index.