Dow Jones Islamic Market Index wins "Best Shari'ah-Compliant Index Provider"

 

18 May 2010
Source : Dow Jones indexes/Stoxx

Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced that it has been named "Best Shari'ah-Compliant Index Provider" by Global Finance magazine for the third consecutive year.

Global Finance's award for the World's Best Islamic Financial Institution recognizes financial companies that make significant contributions to the growth of Islamic finance and have successfully met their clients' needs for Shari'ah-compliant products, while creating the foundation for continued fast growth in the future.

"We are honored to receive this award for the third year in a row. The Dow Jones Islamic Market Index series is one of our finest achievements in terms of innovation, concept, design, and market acceptance. Our Islamic index family continues to gain prominence as the global standard for measuring Shari'ah-compliant equity investment," said Michael A. Petronella, president designate, Dow Jones Indexes. "We are committed to continue providing meaningful, new Islamic indexes in the years to come," he added.

Award winners were selected by the editors of Global Finance, after extensive consultations with bankers, corporate finance executives and analysts worldwide. Selection criteria included objective factors such as growth in assets, profitability, geographic reach, strategic relationships, new business development and innovation in products, as well as subjective feedback from Islamic finance analysts, consultants and other industry participants.

In the past six years, the Dow Jones Islamic Market index series has won 20 industry awards by organizations, research institutions and magazines around the world; among them are the International Islamic Finance Forum, the Kuala Lumpur Islamic Finance Forum, the Islamic Center of Southern California, Global Finance magazine, Islamic Business and Finance magazine, Islamic Finance News and Incisive Media.

The Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes were introduced in 1999 as the first indexes intended to measure the global universe of investable equities that pass screens for Shari'ah compliance. With more than 100 indexes, the series is the most comprehensive family of Islamic market measures and includes regional, country, and industry indexes, all of which are subsets of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index.

An independent Shari'ah Supervisory Board counsels Dow Jones Indexes on matters related to the compliance of index-eligible companies. To determine their eligibility for the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, stocks are screened based on their industry type and their financial ratios. Excluded are companies engaged in the following lines of business: alcohol, tobacco, pork-related products, financial services, defense/weapons and entertainment. Also excluded are companies for which the following financial ratios are 33% or more: debt divided by trailing 24-month average market capitalization; cash plus interest-bearing securities divided by trailing 24-month average market capitalization; and accounts receivables divided by trailing 24-month average market capitalization.

There are currently more than 150 licensees with more than US$7 billion in assets benchmarked to the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes.

For more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, please visit www.djindexes.com.

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About Dow Jones Indexes
Dow Jones Indexes (www.djindexes.com) is a leading full-service index provider that 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 offers more than 130,000 equity indexes as well as fixed-income and alternative indexes, including measures of hedge funds, commodities and real estate. Dow Jones Indexes employs clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. Dow Jones Indexes is part of CME Group Index Services LLC, a joint venture company which is owned 90 percent by CME Group Inc. (www.cmegroup.com) and 10 percent by Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com), a News Corporation company (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV; www.newscorp.com).

"Dow Jones(r)", "Dow Jones Indexes", "Dow Jones Islamic Market index" and all other index names listed above are service marks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC ("Dow Jones"), and have been licensed for use by CME Group Index Services LLC ("CME Indexes").

Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com or call one of the Dow Jones Indexes press offices:
New York: +1-212-597-5720
Frankfurt: +49-69-29725-290
Hong Kong: +852 800 969 336
Singapore: +65-6-4154-299

© Press Release 2010