iShares JPMorgan $ Emerging Market Bond Fund surpasses $1 billion in AUM

iShares, the world’s largest Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) platform of BlackRock, today announced that one of its leading emerging market bond funds has surpassed $1 billion in assets, as investor demand for emerging market exposure continues.

iShares JPMorgan $ Emerging Market Bond Fund tracks a broad, diverse U.S dollar denominated emerging market debt benchmark, and is designed to give access to the debt instruments from more than 30 Emerging Market countries in one trade. The fund is one of iShares highest yielding funds and has seen over $700 million in inflows year to date, making it the fifth best performing European iShares product in terms of asset gathering in 2010[1]. iShares’ leading emerging market equity product, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Fund, has seen the most net new assets of any iShares product so far this year, having raised over $1.7 billion in assets year to date.

David Gardner, Head of Sales for iShares EMEA commented, “Emerging markets have become one of the most attractive asset classes for investors in 2010. The iShares JPMorgan $ Emerging Markets Bond Fund is benefiting from this demand, offering investors access to sovereign and quasi-sovereign emerging market bonds including both fixed and floating rate instruments in a diversified, cost-effective and liquid way.”

“The continued demand for the iShares JPMorgan $ Emerging Markets Bond Fund and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Fund reflects investor demand for the asset class and reinforces iShares’ position as the world’s leading provider of exchange traded products. iShares has the most extensive range of emerging market ETFs in the market, with 20 ETFs available to European investors at both a country and regional level across Equity and Fixed Income. Most of the funds are available in a physical-based structure, giving investors direct exposure to the securities within an index. For those exposures where it is either difficult or impossible to build funds in a physical-based way, iShares uses an over collateralised, multi-counterparty, swap-based ETF platform.