ZURICH, Switzerland, June 23, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Dow Jones Indexes and STOXX Limited, two leading global index providers, today announced the Dow Jones Luxury Index -- which launched today, and existing Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index have been licensed to BNP Paribas to serve as the basis for two exchange-traded funds. Both the EasyETF DJ Luxury and EasyETF STOXX 600 are available today at Euronext.
The Dow Jones Luxury Index is a new index designed to measure the market performance of companies worldwide that derive a sizeable portion of revenues from providing "luxury" goods and services.
The Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index is an existing index designed to provide a broad yet liquid representation of large, mid and small capitalization companies in 18 European countries. The index covers Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
"The Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index provides investors with exposure to the core European markets and is a natural complement to BNP Paribas' lineup of ETFs based on the Dow Jones STOXX Indexes. The Dow Jones Luxury Index allows market participants to tap into a niche sector with tremendous growth potential," said Werner Buerki, chairman, STOXX supervisory board.
The Dow Jones Luxury Index tracks the performance of 30 companies selected by editors of The Wall Street Journal. The editors choose stocks that reflect a diversified cross-section of the luxury segment across countries, sectors and market capitalization. The index is weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization and component weights are capped at 10% of the index. Composition changes to the index are made on an as-needed basis. Share numbers and float-adjustment factors are updated quarterly.
As of June 20, 2008, the Dow Jones Luxury Index is up 6.71% since its inception on January 2, 2006. The top three components by float-adjusted market capitalization are Compagnie Financiere Richemont S.A., LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Porsche Automobil Holding SE. The Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index is up 9.73% in the same time period.
For more information on the Dow Jones Luxury Index, please visit www.djindexes.com. For more information on the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index, please visit www.stoxx.com.
Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com.
The Dow Jones Luxury Index was first published on June 23, 2008. All estimated daily historical closing prices prior to that date are based on back-testing (i.e., calculations of how the index might have performed in the past if it had existed). Backtested performance information is purely hypothetical and is solely for informational purposes. Backtested performance does not represent actual performance, and past performance is not indicative of future results.
Note to Editors:
About Dow Jones Indexes
A full-service index provider, Dow Jones Indexes develops, maintains and licenses indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products. Best known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes also is co-owner of the Dow Jones STOXX indexes, the world's leading pan-European indexes, and together with Wilshire Associates, provides the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Index family, which is anchored by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 and covers more than 12,000 securities in 61 markets. Beyond equity indexes, Dow Jones Indexes maintains a number of alternative indexes, including measures of the hedge fund and commodity markets. Dow Jones indexes are maintained according to clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. www.djindexes.com
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Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NYSE:NWS) (NYSE:NWS.A) (ASX:NWS) (ASX:NWSLV) (www.newscorp.com). Dow Jones is a leading provider of global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Its Local Media Group operates community-based information franchises. Dow Jones owns 50% of SmartMoney and 33% of STOXX Ltd. and provides news content to radio stations in the U.S.