The S&P/Citigroup Global Equity indexes and the S&P/IFCG and frontier indexes will be combined to create the S&P Global Equity indexes, Standard & Poor’s announced today.
“In putting this together, our goals have been to form one consistent, transparent index series covering all the major equity markets around the world,” said David M. Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the S&P Index Committee, in a conference call. The new series will cover 12,400 companies in 83 countries.
S&P’s broad market indexes will see some name changes, such as S&P/Citigroup BMI World will become S&P Developed BMI. The term “emerging” will still be used, and “global” will include all developed and emerging markets when used in index names.
Size divisions will also change, with large-cap, midcap and small-cap designations referring to the top 70%, the next 15% and the bottom 15%, respectively, of the total capital in each country. S&P LargeMidCap indexes will represent 85% of available capital, with S&P SmallCap indexes representing the bottom 15% of capital. Midcap indexes with the middle 15% of available capital will also be offered.
The size divisions will replace the PMI indexes, which represented 80% of available capital in each country, and EMI indexes representing 20% of capital.
Also, 11 markets will be added to the S&P Frontier BMI index, bringing its total to 35. The new markets are Bahrain, Colombia, Jordan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, U.A.E. and Zimbabwe.
