NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced that Bahrain, China, Egypt, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates will be added to the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index and all of its sub-indexes, including the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Emerging Index and Dow Jones Islamic Market Asia/Pacific Index. The additions will become effective as of the start of trading on Monday, December 22, 2008.
"The new country additions supplement the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes with highly attractive and dynamic emerging markets. It is our goal to provide the investment community with the most comprehensive benchmarks of companies that comply with Islamic investing principles", said Michael A. Petronella, president of Dow Jones Indexes. "The Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes were originally created in 1999 and continue to serve as the premier benchmark family for Islamic-based equity portfolios."
The addition of the 12 new countries to the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index increases the total number of countries in the index to 54 from 42. All of the 12 countries will be added to the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index and its respective size, sector and regional indexes.
The Dow Jones Islamic Market World Emerging Index measures the performance of 19 emerging markets. Currently, the following 19 countries are included: Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Indonesia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
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. The Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes combine Islamic investment principles with Dow Jones Indexes' objective, transparent and 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.
There are currently more than 75 licensees with more than US$7 billion in assets tracking the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes. For more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, please visit www.djindexes.com.
Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com.
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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 59 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 Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NYSE:NWS) (NYSE:NWS.A) (ASX:NWS) (ASX:NWSLV) (www.newscorp.com).
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