Fund Description: iShares Aaa - A Rated Corporate Bond ETF is an exchange-traded index fund or Index ETF which is a separate investment portfolio of the iShares Trust, an open-end investment management company. INVESTMENT OBJECTIVE: The iShares Aaa - A Rated Corporate Bond ETF seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Barclays Capital U.S. Corporate Aaa - A Capped Index. INDEX DESCRIPTION: The Barclays Capital U.S. Corporate Aaa - A Capped Index is a subset of the Barclays U.S. Corporate Index, which measures the performance of the Aaa - A rated range of the fixed-rate, U.S. dollar-denominated taxable, corporate bond market. The Index is market-capitalization weighted with a 3% cap on any one issuer and a pro rata distribution of any excess weight across the remaining issuers in the Index. The Index includes U.S. dollar-denominated securities publicly issued by U.S. and non-U.S. industrial, utility and financial corporate issuers, with maturities of one year or more, that have $500 million or more of outstanding face value. Each corporate bond must be registered with the SEC, have been exempt from registration at issuance, or have been offered pursuant to Rule 144A with registration rights. In addition, only securities rated A3 or higher will be included in the Index. When ratings from each of Fitch, Inc., Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. and Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC are available, the median rating is used to determine eligibility. When ratings from only two of these agencies are available, that lower rating is used to determine eligibility. When a rating from only one of these agencies is available, that rating is used to determine eligibility. The securities in the Index are updated on the last calendar day of each month. The Fund will invest in non-U.S. issuers to the extent necessary for it to track the Index. As of December 31, 2011, 22.15% of the Index was composed of bonds issued by non-U.S. issuers from the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. FUND STRATEGY: A passive or indexing approach is used to try to achieve the Fund's investment objective. Unlike many investment companies the Fund does not try to beat the Index and does not seek temporary defensive positions when markets decline or appear overvalued. Indexing may eliminate the chance that the Fund will substantially outperform its Index but also may reduce some of the risks of active management, such as poor security selection. Indexing seeks to achieve lower costs and better after-tax performance by keeping portfolio turnover low in comparison to actively managed investment companies. Representative sampling is an indexing strategy that is used which involves investing in a representative sample of securities that collectively has an investment profile similar to the Index. The securities selected are expected to have, in the aggregate, investment characteristics (based on factors such as market capitalization and industry weightings), fundamental characteristics (such as return variability and yield) and liquidity measures similar to those of the Index. A Fund may or may not hold all of the securities in the Index. The Fund generally invests at least 90% of its assets in the securities of the Index and in investments that provide substantially similar exposure to the securities in the Index. The Fund may at times invest up to 20% of its assets in certain futures, options and swap contracts, cash and cash equivalents, including money market funds. The Fund may lend securities representing up to one-third of the value of the Fund’s total assets (including the value of the collateral received). FUND MANAGEMENT: BlackRock Fund Advisors (BFA) serves as the investment adviser to the Fund.