In February 2022, foreign investors holding Russian equities — a $70 billion aggregate position across US and European funds — watched their holdings become permanently inaccessible. The Moscow Exchange shut down. MSCI reclassified Russia from Emerging Market to Standalone at a price of effectively zero.

ADRs and GDRs were force-delisted. A new Russian law prohibited the maintenance of foreign depositary receipt programs entirely. Investors who had treated Russian stocks as a normal part of an emerging-market allocation learned, overnight, that the word 'emerging' carries risks that developed-market investors have not faced in generations: political risk, legal risk, and the risk that a functioning market simply ceases to function.

Source: MSCI Index announcement March 2022; Morgan Lewis client alert on Russian ADR delistings. MSCI classifies equity markets into three tiers: Developed (23 markets), Emerging (24 markets), and Frontier (28 markets). The criteria are not just GDP-based — they include market accessibility (foreign ownership limits, capital flow restrictions), market size and liquidity, and institutional framework (rule of law, settlement infrastructure, regulatory quality).