NEW YORK, Dec. 11, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games now completed, Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced the renaming of the Dow Jones 2008 Summer Games Index to the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index. The name change reflects the index's objective of measuring the performance of companies that are official sponsors or suppliers of the Olympic Games, starting with the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The new index composition also is being announced today.
Twenty-five new companies will be added to the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index while 26 components will be deleted. Nine components will remain in the index as they are worldwide sponsors and suppliers of the Olympic Games. This decreases the number of components in the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index to 34. These changes will be effective as of the open of trading on Monday, December 22, 2008.
The top three components of the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index by float-adjusted market capitalization are General Electric (U.S., Industrial Goods & Services, GE), Coca Cola Co. (U.S., Food & Beverage, KO) and McDonald's Corp (U.S., Travel & Leisure, MCD).
The three largest components by float-adjusted market capitalization to be added to the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index are Royal Bank of Canada (Canada, Banks, RY.T; RY), 3M Co. (U.S., Industrial Goods & Services, MMM) and General Mills Inc. (U.S., Food & Beverage, GIS). The three largest components by float-adjusted market capitalization to be deleted from the index are Johnson & Johnson (U.S., Health Care, JNJ), Microsoft (U.S., Technology, MSFT) and BHP Billiton Ltd. (Australia, Basic Resources, BHP.AU; BHP).
The index universe of the current Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index is defined as all publicly traded companies that are stated as official partners, sponsors and suppliers of the 2010 Winter Games by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games (VANOC).
The Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index is reviewed quarterly in March, June, September and December. Both price and total return indexes are available and calculated in U.S. dollar. Daily historical values are available back to December 31, 2006, with a base value of 100.
For more information on the Dow Jones Summer/Winter Games Index and its complete component list, please visit www.djindexes.com.
Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com.
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