The committee has concluded that there should be no change to the weighting of the LMEX index until 1 July 2001 (subject to the discretion available to the committee to consider and make changes to the weighting at any time, should market or production circumstances make that appropriate).
The committee reviewed world metal production data from the World Metal Statistics Yearbook 2000, published by the World Bureau of Metal Statistics on 15 May 2000, together with publicly available LME liquidity data. This review was undertaken to establish whether there should be any change to the weighting that would come into effect in September 2000. This year's review was conducted later than will normally be the case because the effective date for any change was chosen to allow the contract a minimum period of trading on the weights originally established.
For the future the pattern of reviews will be as set out in LME printed materials about the index. For example, in 2001 the index will be reviewed before 31 March, with any change coming into effect three months later, on 1 July.
Decisions on the weighting of the index are taken without reference to any other body and communicated to the market as a whole through the LME notice mechanism.
The members of the committee are:
Professor Thomas Schneeweis (Committee chairman) Professor of Finance at the University of Massachusetts School of Management; Professor Stewart Hodges, the Financial Options Research Centre at the University of Warwick; Dr Richard Spurgin, Assistant Professor of Finance, Clark University, Graduate School of Management; Mr Phillip Crowson, former LME board director and former chief economist of Rio Tinto Limited, now retired; Mr Nick Moore, director, Robert Flemings Securities.
