State Street Global Advisors [see profile] today unveiled the SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond Exchange Traded Fund, which provides access to a new corporate bond indexing methodology. The firm said it will soon launch its Issuer Scored Corporate Index Strategy to further enhance its fixed income offering, which includes more than $3811 billion in assets globally.

The SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond ETF seeks to track the performance of the Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Index. The Index includes publicly issued US dollar-denominated corporate issues that are rated investment grade and have $250 million or more of par amount outstanding. Individual issuers in the index are weighted using the following quantitative measures: return on assets, interest coverage and current ratio. Rebalancing based on these ratios occurs every six months on the last business day of March and September.

“Despite some compression in spreads over the past year, corporate credit remains a very attractive asset class for investors,” stated Kevin Anderson, global chief investment officer for Fixed Income and Currency at SSgA. “The SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond ETF and forthcoming SSgA Issuer Scored Corporate Index Strategy strengthen our fixed income offering by providing investors and advisors with solutions that address the concerns some have with the allocation of capital in existing corporate credit index strategies.”  

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