Internet Daily Asia
CyberWorks gets heavy in MSCI index
By Vivian Chu & Bill Clifford, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 8:55 AM ET Jul 18, 2000 NewsWatch
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Morgan Stanley Capital International's Hong Kong Index will show increased weighting for Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW), to 66.54 percent of its market capitalization from 50 percent, after the broadband Internet company completes its takeover of Cable & Wireless HKT early next month.
Cable & Wireless HKT's shares (HKT: news, msgs), carried in the index at full weighting, will stop trading August 8. MSCI said it would add Richard Li's PCCW (PCCLF: news, msgs) and five other Hong Kong companies to its Hong Kong index last May. Ten other companies were removed, including Cheung Kong (Holdings), run by Li's billionaire father.
MSCI applies a market cap factor when calculating the weighting of stocks with free floats of less than 40 percent. After absorbing C&W HKT, PCCW's free float, or the number of shares in public hands, is expected to be 30-35 percent, MSCI said. The market cap factor also reduces the impact of the change on the index's total market cap.
PCCW's takeover of Hong Kong's dominant telecom carrier, valued now at $28 billion, is a key reason Asian M&A activity skyrocketed to $87 billion in the first half of this year, more than double the $40 billion done in the same period of 1999, according to Thomson Financial data released Tuesday.