MSCI Launches Ex Tobacco Involvement Indexes

• Indexes designed for investors who seek to exclude stocks involved in the production of tobacco

MSCI Inc. MSCI, a leading provider of indexes and portfolio construction and risk management tools and services for global investors, announced today the launch of a suite of Global Ex Tobacco Involvement Indexes.

The new indexes are free float-adjusted market capitalization weighted indexes designed to be used as a benchmark for investors who seek to exclude stocks involved in tobacco production. The indexes exclude all companies classified as producers of tobacco and also exclude companies deriving 5 percent or more aggregate revenue from distribution, retail and supply of tobacco related products.

MSCI, the world's largest provider of environmental social and governance (ESG) indexes¹ and research², has longstanding experience in developing tobacco exclusion custom indexes for global clients. Building on nearly 20 years of expertise, these new Ex Tobacco Involvement Indexes will become a part of the standard offering in MSCI's ESG index module.

"There is growing demand for exclusionary indexes globally, including interest among the world's largest pension and endowment funds for tobacco exclusion benchmarks," said Deborah Yang, Global Head of ESG Indexes. "We are pleased to announce today the launch of a suite of Ex Tobacco Involvement Indexes, which combined with our existing ESG indexes, provide global clients with an array of tobacco exclusion solutions. By making this suite of indexes part of the standard ESG index module offering, it makes a tobacco exclusion investment strategy easier to implement, and keeps the cost of adoption low, reducing hurdles to removing tobacco for both passive and active portfolios."

MSCI has launched an initial suite of Tobacco Exclusion Indexes:

• MSCI ACWI ex Tobacco Involvement Index
• MSCI World ex Tobacco Involvement Index
• MSCI EAFE ex Tobacco Involvement Index
• MSCI Japan ex Tobacco Involvement Index
• MSCI EM ex Tobacco Involvment Index

About MSCI

For more than 40 years, MSCI's research-based indexes and analytics have helped the world's leading investors build and manage better portfolios. Clients rely on our offerings for deeper insights into the drivers of performance and risk in their portfolios, broad asset class coverage and innovative research.

Our line of products and services includes indexes, analytical models, data, real estate benchmarks and ESG research.

MSCI serves 99 of the top 100 largest money managers, according to the most recent P&I ranking.

For more information, visit us at www.msci.com.

MSCI ESG Indexes are designed to help institutional investors more effectively benchmark ESG investment performance, issue index-based investment products, as well as manage, measure and report on ESG mandates. Over USD $125 Billion in institutional, retail and exchange-traded fund assets are benchmarked to MSCI ESG Indexes, growing 102% from Q2 2017.³

For more information, visit us at www.msci.com/esg-indexes

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¹ By number of indexes and by assets tracking the indexes compared with publically available information produced by FTSE and S&P Dow Jones as of September 2018

² By coverage of companies and by number of clients based on publicly available information produced by Sustainalytics, Vigeo/EIRIS and ISS ESG as of September 2018

³ As of Jun 2018, based on Bloomberg, Morningstar and MSCI data. Active AUM includes data as of Dec, 2017 reported in Jun,2018 by eVestment. Data excludes mandate or policy benchmark related assets.

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