Market intervention casts a shadow over nation's MSCI dreams

It is hard for Alex Wolf to believe that the Chinese officials he met four months ago are the same ones running the world's second-largest stock market today.

When Wolf, an emerging market economist at Standard Life Investments, sat down with the nation's securities regulators in Edinburgh in March, they had a clear message: China is enacting the market reforms needed to lure foreign investors and gain entry into MSCI Inc's global indexes.

Now, after a week of unprecedented government intervention to prop up the stock market, it is clear to Wolf that their greater priority at the moment is easing the pain from a rout that many analysts said was inevitable. He is among international investors at Aberdeen Asset Management and Clough Capital Partners who said market intervention threatens to further delay MSCI inclusion after the index provider decided to leave A shares out of its equity gauges in June.