Dow Jones Indexes, Egypt's Stock Exchanges To Launch Blue Chip Index

Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, and the Cairo & Alexandria Stock Exchanges (CASE) launched, on 12 April 2006, the Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index. The blue-chip index measuring the performance of the Egyptian stock market follows the transparent and objective methodology of the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 Index. The index includes 20 leading Egyptian stocks ranked by free-float market capitalization, sales/revenue and net income.

The Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index is designed to serve as an underlying for investment products such as mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other financial products that enable investors to participate in the performance of the Egyptian stock market.

"The cooperation with CASE - the biggest stock exchanges in North Africa - sets the standard for investible indexes in this region and provides reliable underlying tools for financial products for these expanding regional investment communities," said Lars Hamich, managing director of STOXX Ltd., the joint venture that is responsible for Dow Jones Indexes' business development in Europe and Asia. "We are optimistic that this index will raise the profile of this thriving financial market and will help to attract more international investors."

"We are delighted to partner with Dow Jones and are confident that this collaboration will encourage the development of new products on Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index and thus allow global investors to reap the benefits from a fast growing and deep market like Egypt,” said Maged Shawky, chairman, Cairo & Alexandria Stock Exchanges.

The methodology of the Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index is consistent with the transparent and rules-based Dow Jones global index family. The top five companies in the index by free-float market capitalization are: Orascom Telecom Holding, Orascom Construction Industries, EFG Hermes Holding, Egyptian Kuwaiti Holding and Commercial International Bank.

The Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index is reviewed annually in June. Float figures, provided by CASE, are updated bi-annually in June and December. The weightings are reviewed quarterly. The index has a 94.05% annualized total return performance from December 31, 2001 until March 31, 2006. The base value is set at 100, historical data is available back to December 31, 2001. The Dow Jones CASE Egypt Titans 20 Index is calculated in Egyptian Pounds as well as Euro and US Dollars. The full list of components, including weighting and values of the Dow Jones CASE Titans 20 Index, is available on www.djindexes.com http://www.djindexes.com/.

The Dow Jones CASE Titans 20 Index is part of the Dow Jones Titans series of indexes. The series comprises the Dow Jones Global Titans 50, Dow Jones Islamic Market Titans 100, Dow Jones Sector Titans 30 with 18 global sector indexes, 16 Dow Jones Country Titans indexes that cover Europe, Asia and North America, and three regional Titans indexes - the Dow Jones Tiger Titans 50, Dow Jones DIFC Arabia Titans 50 and Dow Jones Asian Titans 50 Index.