Deutsche Börse, a leading global exchange organization and Europe’s premier index provider, announced today the launch of its index business in the United States - a new market for its indices, including the benchmark German DAX Index. The announcement, made at the Fifth Annual World Series of Exchange Traded Funds Conference in Miami, Florida, is a significant expansion of Deutsche Börse’s index business and comes at a time when an increasing number of institutional and private investors in the U.S. are focusing on international indices. Deutsche Börse will begin licensing its index portfolios to U.S. financial services firms to develop customized derivatives, structured products and Exchange Traded funds.
Van Eck Associates Corporation is the first US customer to license the indices and will introduce a Market Vectors ETF tied to the performance of the DAXglobal® Russia+ Index, one of a series of international indices provided by Deutsche Börse. DAXglobal Russia+ tracks the performance of the largest and most liquid American Depository Receipts (ADRs) and Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on Russian companies traded on various stock exchanges across the globe as well as index constituents represented by shares listed at the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX). The DAXglobal® index family currently comprises, among others, the DAXglobal BRIC Index and the DAXglobal Asia Index.
Deutsche Börse’s Market Data & Analytics division calculates more than 2,100 indices and publishes their performance real-time. The portfolio includes equity and bond indices for national and international markets, as well as strategy, commodity, volatility and customized indices. With the iNAV® trademark, Deutsche Börse also calculates indicative net asset values. These indicate the value of various investment portfolios, thus providing transparency for investors. Deutsche Börse AG calculates the iNAV® values of index fund units on an ongoing basis on behalf of issuers and publishes them in the same way as share prices. Market Data & Analytics also compiles, distributes and markets independent capital market information, such as price data, trading statistics and back-office information for banks and financial institutions.
Hartmut Graf, Head of Issuer Data & Analytics at Deutsche Börse, stated on a panel at today’s conference that the international indices and the strategy indices are the products that U.S based issuers are most interested in. Deutsche Börse’s DAXglobal index family is currently comprised of five indices, including the DAXglobal BRIC, the DAXglobal Asia and DAXglobal Russia. Deutsche Börse’s strategy index suite supports different investment strategies in a transparent, rules-based and cost effective manner.
“As Europe’s leading index provider, we are now looking forward to being able to offer U.S. investors access to a series of International indexes that will bring a new level of quality and innovation as they seek to implement their investment strategies,” said Mr. Graf.
In February, Deutsche Börse launched ShortDAX, which provides a strategic index product to investors expecting a negative performance for the DAX (the German benchmark equity index) or who are looking for a short-term, efficient hedge against falling prices. This makes Deutsche Börse the first index provider in Europe to develop an effective short strategy in the form of an index.
