iShares details three new investment-grade corporate bond term funds

By Toni Weeks

San Diego, Jan. 17 - iShares Trust gave more details about its three new upcoming exchange-traded funds that focus on investment-grade corporate debt, according to separate N-1A filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The iShares 2016 Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF, the iShares 2020 Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF and the iShares 2023 Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF will each seek investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of an underlying index. The respective underlying indexes are the Barclays 2016 Maturity High Quality Corporate index, the Barclays 2020 Maturity High Quality Corporate index and the Barclays 2023 Maturity High Quality Corporate index. All are based on the Barclays U.S. Corporate index, which is comprised of dollar-denominated, taxable, investment-grade bonds, but the funds' benchmark indexes do not include any financial issuers. Each fund generally invests at least 80% of its assets in the securities of its applicable underlying index.

The securities within each underlying index will mature within a certain time frame. Each fund will terminate on a specific date, at which time its assets will be distributed to investors.

The 2016 fund will terminate on March 31, 2016. Its index is composed of dollar-denominated, taxable, investment-grade corporate bonds scheduled to mature after March 31, 2015 and before April 1, 2016. Components primarily include industrials companies and utilities companies.

The 2020 fund will terminate March 31, 2020. Its index is composed of the same types of bonds as the 2016 fund, but the bonds are scheduled to mature after March 31, 2019 and before April 1, 2020.

The 2023 fund will terminate on March 31, 2023. The bonds of its underlying index, comprised of the same types of bonds as in the 2016 and 2020 indexes, are scheduled to mature after March 31, 2022 and before April 1, 2023.

Securities within an index may be issued by both U.S. and non-U.S. issuers with an outstanding face value of at least $250 million at time of inclusion.

James Mauro and Scott Radell will head up each fund's portfolio management team.

The ticker symbols are "YTMA" for the 2016 fund, "YTMC" for the 2020 fund and "YTMD" for the 2023 fund.

There are no shareholder fees. Total annual operating expenses of each fund will be 0.1%, which is comprised solely of a management fee.

San Francisco-based BlackRock Fund Advisors will act as the investment adviser to the funds.

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