Dow Jones Indexes has announced it is launching blue-chip indices for seven European countries. The new benchmarks will form part of the Country Titans family of indices, and will cover France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Each index will contain 30 liquid stocks, and the selected stocks will be the largest and most liquid securities in their corresponding market, the index provider says. The Country Titans family already comprises indices based on Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and the United Kingdom. The indices represent between 48% and 68% of their respective market capitalisation.
They are free-float market capitalisation weighted and weights are capped at 10% to stop any one company becoming dominant.
Dow Jones says it expects exchange-traded funds to be launched on some of the new Country Titans indices later this year.
Michael Petronella, managing director of Dow Jones Indexes says the Country Titans had been created because of demand from the marketplace, which was there because of the exclusive nature of existing exchange-traded fund licences.
“With adding seven indexes to the existing Country Titans family, we complement our blue-chip series of indexes which allows investors to allocate assets and switch easily from countries to regions and to global products,” he says.