Industry Updates

Dow Jones Indexes launches Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

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Opalesque Industry Updates - The index will underlie first Shari'ah-compliant ETF in the U.S.

Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced it licensed the Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index to Javelin Investment Management, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The blue-chip index will underlie the first Shari'ah compliant exchange-traded fund listed in the U.S. The JETS Dow Jones Islamic Market International Index Fund (JVS) will be available at New York Stock Exchange today.

"The Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index provides markets participants around the world with exposure to the 100 leading Shari'ah-compliant companies outside the United States. Javelin's decision to select it as the underlying index for the first Shari'ah compliant ETF in the United States enables market participants to complement their existing U.S portfolios with international coverage," said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes. "The Dow Jones Islamic Market index family was the first to market and continues to be the standard of Islamic indexing around the globe."

The Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index measures the stock performance of 100 leading ex-U.S. companies that have passed rules-based screens for Shari'ah compliance. 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 12-month average market capitalization; cash plus interest-bearing securities divided by trailing 12-month average market capitalization; and accounts receivables divided by trailing 12-month average market capitalization.

The U.S. dollar denominated Dow Jones Islamic Market International Titans 100 Index is free-float market capitalization weighted and each component's weight is capped at 10% of the index to avoid overweight of one single stock. The index composition is reviewed annually in June. The index is also reviewed on an ongoing basis to account for corporate actions such as mergers, de-listings or bankruptcies. Year-to-date, the index is up 10.34% through June 30, 20091.

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.

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

Please visit www.djindexes.com for more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes.

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