Bursa Malaysia And FTSE Group Sign Agreement To Create Indices For Malaysian Market

Bursa Malaysia and FTSE Group, the award-winning index provider, today announced that they have signed a co-operation agreement to create a new series of equity indices for Malaysia. At launch, the series will include domestic indices and will be expanded in time to include other indices. Bursa Malaysia and FTSE are confident that the series of new indices will attract both domestic and international investors with an interest in Malaysian stocks. The indices will be suitable for a range of index linked investment vehicles, including Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), derivatives and OTC products.

Market research has identified investor appetite for new indices in Malaysia, which incorporate international standard design features, and FTSE has been selected by Bursa Malaysia as its preferred index partner to create a new series.

Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia, Yusli Mohamed Yusoff commented that “ The creation of these new indices will result in us having more internationally aligned benchmarks for our market. This enables investors to better assess our market’s competitiveness at the global level.” He further added that the partnership with FTSE also gives Bursa Malaysia the added advantage of benefiting from the international recognition and wide following that the FTSE brand already garners.

Donald Keith, Deputy Chief Executive, FTSE Group added, “FTSE is proud to work with Bursa Malaysia as an index partner and to bring its award-winning approach to indexing to Malaysia.”

The new series is expected to be live in the first half of 2006. Full details including ground rules, constituents and historical performance information, will be announced when the series is live.

About FTSE Group
FTSE Group is a world-leader in the creation and management of indexes. With offices in Beijing, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Madrid, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, FTSE Group services clients in 77 countries worldwide. It calculates and manages the FTSE Global Equity Index Series, which includes world-recognized indexes ranging from the FTSE All-World Index, the FTSE4Good series and the FTSEurofirst Index series, as well as domestic indexes such as the prestigious FTSE 100. The company has collaborative arrangements with the Athens, AMEX, Cyprus, Euronext, Johannesburg London, Madrid, NASDAQ and Taiwan exchanges, as well as Nomura Securities, Hang Seng and Xinhua Finance of China. FTSE also has a collaborative agreement with Dow Jones Indexes to provide a single sector classification system for global investors.
FTSE indexes are used extensively by investors world-wide for investment analysis, performance measurement, asset allocation, portfolio hedging and for creating a wide range of index tracking funds. Independent committees of senior fund managers, derivatives experts, actuaries and other experienced practitioners review all changes to the indexes to ensure that they are made objectively and without bias. Real-time FTSE indexes are calculated on systems managed by Reuters. Prices and FX rates used are supplied by Reuters.

About Bursa Malaysia
Bursa Malaysia Berhad is a public company limited by shares under the Companies Act 1965. Bursa Malaysia is an approved exchange holding company under Section 11D of the Securities Industry Act 1983. Other companies in the Bursa Malaysia Bhd Group of companies include a stock exchange, a derivatives exchange, an off-shore international financial exchange, equity and derivatives clearing houses, a central depository, an information services provider and an Information Technology services provider.
Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bursa Malaysia Berhad, is an approved stock exchange under Section 8 of the Securities Industry Act 1983.