Nasdaq OMX, parent of the world’s first electronic stock market, has announced the launch of the Nasdaq Global Index family. The launch follows last month’s acquisition of Mergent’s index business, home of the Dividend Achievers, and further reflects the company’s push into the fast-growing world of financial-market indexing, an industry flourishing thanks in part to the success of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
John Jacobs, Nasdaq OMX Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Global Index Products.
The Nasdaq Global Index family represents more than 98% of the global equity investable marketplace and will result in the development of 24,000 indices.
The index family consists of global equity securities broken down by market segment, region, country, size and sector, and covers 9,000 securities with a combined float-adjusted market capitalisation of over $32 trillion.
The first phase of the launch will see the introduction of approximately 4,000 indices that are calculated in US dollars. The remaining indices will be unveiled in subsequent phases in other currencies.
John Jacobs, Nasdaq OMX Executive Vice President, said: “The Nasdaq Global Index family offers institutional and retail investors, asset managers, traders and other market participants a broad representation of the global investable equity marketplace through efficient access and pricing.”
He added: “Our newest index offering provides additional opportunities for financial product sponsors and portfolio managers to benchmark and track global equities. With the introduction of this comprehensive family of indexes, our index business — Nasdaq OMX Global Indexes — continues its growth as a premier global index operation.”
The entire index family covers 45 countries classified as Developed and Emerging Markets across the following regions: the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East-Africa. Like all NASDAQ OMX indices, the family is based on a transparent, rules-based index methodology.
With the introduction of this latest index range, Nasdaq OMX now offers benchmark families across multiple asset classes and geographies including the Nasdaq Commodity Index, the Nasdaq OMX Green Economy and the Nasdaq US All Market Index.