iShares rolls out new emerging-markets ETF

iShares, a unit of Barclays Global Investors, today launched an emerging-markets exchange-traded fund: the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Eastern Europe Index Fund (ESR). “The emerging markets have been an ongoing investment theme throughout 2009,” Michael Latham, iShares co-chief executive, said in a statement. “Eastern Europe is a region poised for potential growth and presents significant opportunity for investors. This new fund will help provide investors with the ability to tactically take advantage of market opportunities within difficult-to-access markets and allow others to strategically increase their current emerging-markets allocation.” The fund will track the MSCI Emerging Markets Eastern Europe Index, which is a free float-adjusted market capitalization index designed to measure equity market performance of four emerging-markets countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. The fund's annual expense ratio is 0.72%.