Dow Jones Indexes has launched the Dow Jones Islamic Market Asean Index, designed as the first index to represent the performance of Shari’ah-compliant companies in south-east Asian cou
Dow Jones Indexes has launched the Dow Jones Islamic Market Asean Index, designed as the first index to represent the performance of Shari’ah-compliant companies in south-east Asian countries.
The index represents six of the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
It serves as underlying for financial products such as exchange-traded funds or as a benchmark for actively managed mutual funds.
The index has been licensed to Malaysia-based Corston-Smith Asset Management to be used as the basis for a long-only corporate governance investment fund.
Mike Petronella, president of Dow Jones Indexes, says: ‘Asean member countries are among the fastest emerging economies in Asia. The Dow Jones Islamic Market Asean Index now enables market participants to track Shari’ah-compliant stocks across the Southeast Asian region. The index further broadens the geographical coverage of the well sought after Dow Jones Islamic Market index series which follows a unique methodology and has set the standard for Islamic indexing in the past decade.’
The index is weighted by free-float market capitalization.
As of 12 November, 2008, the index consists of 284 components. The top five components by float-adjusted market capitalization are PTT PCL, Sime Darby, Singapore Airlines, Singapore Telecommunications and Telekomunikasi Indonesia).
Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes seek to measure the global universe of investable equities that pass screens for Shari’ah compliance.
They combine Islamic investment principles with Dow Jones Indexes’ rules-based methodology.
The index family includes more than 90 regional, country and industry indexes derived from the flagship Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index.
In 2006 the index family expanded to include the Dow Jones Islamic Market Sustainability Index, which combines Islamic investing principles with sustainability criteria, the Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index, the first index to track Islamic bonds, and Dow Jones Islamic Market BRIC Equal Weighted Index, which tracks Shari’ah compliant stocks in Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Islamic indexes for Sri Lanka, Dubai blue-chips, Hong Kong listed Chinese stocks, India and Malaysian blue-chips were launched within the last year.
There are currently more than 75 licensees with more than USD7bn in assets benchmarked to the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes.
