MSCI keeps South Korea emerging, extends Indonesia review to November

MSCI kept South Korea in its emerging-markets category and pushed its review of Indonesia's market status to November in its latest accessibility assessment. The decision means Seoul still fell short of the watchlist for developed-market promotion, a goal long tied to efforts to narrow the "Korea discount" in local stocks. MSCI said offshore trading limits on the won remained a key obstacle despite steps by South Korean authorities. For Indonesia, MSCI said it would keep assessing market reforms after freezing the country's stocks from its indexes in January over investability concerns. If those changes are not enough, MSCI said it could weigh options including cutting Indonesia to frontier-market status.