NEW YORK and SHANGHAI, China, Sept. 8, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, and China Business Network Co. Ltd. (CBN), a leading professional financial media company, today launched 14 blue-chip sector indexes tracking the largest stocks traded in China.
The Dow Jones CBN China 600 Sector Blue-Chip Indexes are subsets of the Dow Jones CBN China 600 Index, which tracks the largest 600 A-shares traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The 14 sectors are Automobiles & Parts, Basic Resources, Chemicals, Construction & Materials, Financials, Food & Beverages, Health Care, Industrial Goods & Services, Oil & Gas, Personal & Household Goods, Retail, Technology, Travel & Leisure, Utilities.
The Dow Jones CBN China 600 Sector Blue-Chip Indexes were developed to meet increasing demand for transparent and competitive sector indexes for China and are designed to serve as an underlying for investment products such as mutual funds, ETFs and other investable products.
"With the launch of the Dow Jones CBN China 600 Sector Blue-Chip Indexes, Dow Jones Indexes increases significantly our index offerings for China," said Lars Hamich, managing director of STOXX Ltd., the joint venture responsible for Dow Jones Indexes' business development in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. "This approach follows the successful European and global development of sector indexes and will offer clients more opportunities to participate in the further development of the Chinese economy."
"The creation of these new indexes is a reflection of the growing importance of the Chinese economy and the increasingly important role of the Chinese stock exchanges. As the leading professional financial media, CBN hope to be able to bring a higher level of understanding of movements in the Chinese markets," said Li Ruigang, president of Shanghai Media Group. "We believe that this will make the Chinese markets more efficient, giving investors both here in China and investors from abroad greater confidence about investing in Chinese companies. We firmly believe that more transparency and more information help markets become more prosperous, more fair and more attractive to investors."
The Dow Jones CBN China 600 Sector Blue-Chip Indexes are defined by the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB). Each sector index contains at least 10 but not more than 15 securities. Stocks are selected within each sector based on rankings by free-float market capitalization, sales/revenue and net profit, with weights of individual securities restricted to 20%.
The index composition is reviewed semiannually. Historical index values are available on a daily basis back to December 31, 2000. The index is calculated in Renminbi.
Further information about the Dow Jones CBN China 600 Sector Blue-Chip Indexes and the respective component lists are available at www.djindexes.com.
Journalists may email questions regarding this press release to: PR-Indexes@dowjones.com or contact a member of the Dow Jones Indexes public relations group.
Note to Editors:
About Dow Jones Indexes
Dow Jones Indexes is part of Dow Jones & Company, which publishes the world's most vital business and financial news and information. Dow Jones Indexes is a premier global provider of investable indexes, including the Dow Jones Averages and the Dow Jones Global, Regional, Country and Sector Titans Indexes and is co-owner of the Pan-European Dow Jones STOXX Indexes. Together with Wilshire Associates, Dow Jones Indexes markets and licenses the Dow Jones Wilshire index family, which includes the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 and its size, style, and sector indexes. Dow Jones Indexes also offers a number of specialty indexes including hedge fund, commodity and credit derivative indexes.
In addition to Dow Jones Indexes, Dow Jones & Company (NYSE:DJ) dowjones.com publishes The Wall Street Journal and its international and online editions, Barron's and the Far Eastern Economic Review, Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch and the Ottaway group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is co-owner with Reuters Group of Factiva, with Hearst of SmartMoney and with NBC Universal of the CNBC television operations in Asia and Europe. Dow Jones also provides news content to CNBC and radio stations in the U.S.
About CBN
China Business Network (CBN), a flagship broadcaster of Shanghai Media Group (SMG), was officially launched in August 2003, following a merge between the business channel of Shanghai TV Station and the business channel of East Radio Shanghai. The company is ready to reap the benefits of shared resources in staff, information and brand equity.
CBN TV channel, with its headquarter in Shanghai and two studios in Beijing and Shenzhen, is a unique Chinese business channel targeting business professionals and investors. The channel also has analysts based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, New York and London. 19 hours of daily programming with about 12 hours live, cover fields such as economics, finance, trade and investment.
CBN radio is one of the most influential broadcasters in China that provides professional business information, in cooperation with over 30 finance radio channels in the country.
China Business News was first published in Nov. 2004. It not only represents the first business daily in China but also symbolizes an historic milestone in cross-regional cooperation in radio, TV and newspaper.
Besides strengthening its core competency, CBN also strives to consolidate its position as the first cross-regional, cross-media financial and business information provider in China.
CBN established a strategic partnership with CNBC, which marked an historic breakthrough for Chinese TV entry into the world mainstream media arena. In another exclusive partnership with Dow Jones, CBN launched the Dow Jones CBN China 600 Index, which is an authoritative index covering both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. This further enhances CBN's reputation and position as a professional business and financial information provider with its comprehensive coverage of the Chinese stock markets.
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