The New York Mercantile Exchange, a subsidiary of NYMEX Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMX), the world's largest physical commodity exchange, signed an agreement today with Ardour Global Indexes, LLC, a leading developer of benchmark indexes for the global alternative energy industry, to introduce alternative energy index futures and options contracts.
NYMEX Chairman Richard Schaeffer said, "The introduction of alternative energy indexes is an exciting initiative for NYMEX. We have seen an interest in what we believe will be an expanding segment of the world's energy markets, and we strive to introduce innovative new products to the energy arena."
The Ardour Global Alternative Energy Indexes were designed to serve as fair, impartial and transparent measures of the performance of the alternative energy industry. So far this year, the AGI has risen over 5%, reflecting surging interest in the sector caused by high energy prices, as well as security and environmental concerns. The capitalization weighted, float-adjusted family of indexes incorporates companies engaged in five primary alternative energy sectors: alternative energy resources (including wind, solar, ethanol bio-mass and others), distributed generation, environmental controls, energy efficiency, and enabling technologies.
Joseph LaCorte, AGI Index Committee Member, said, "The transformation of the world's energy supply from fossil fuels to alternatives and renewables could become the dominant economic driver of the 21st century. The AGI is the bell-weather for that transformation."
Mr. Schaeffer added, "NYMEX plans to offer these products on the CME Globex® electronic trading platform, where they will be available to investors, risk managers and traders around the world."
The AGI has also been licensed to several major providers of index products, including the Van Kampen division of Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Van Eck Global.
For more information, visit www.nymex.com/iport.
About NYMEX Holdings, Inc.
NYMEX Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMX) is the parent company of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc., the world’s largest physical commodities, offering futures and options trading in energy and metals contracts and clearing services for more than 300 off-exchange energy contracts. Through a hybrid model of open outcry floor trading and electronic trading on CME Globex® and NYMEX ClearPort®, NYMEX offers crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, coal, electricity, gold, silver, copper, aluminum, platinum group metals, emissions, and soft commodities contracts for trading and clearing virtually 24 hours each day. Further information about NYMEX Holdings, Inc. and the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. is available on the NYMEX website at http://www.nymex.com.
About Ardour Global Indexes
Ardour Global Indexes, LLC was founded in 2005 for the express purpose of developing benchmarking tools for the global alternative energy industry. It is a partnership between Ardour Capital Investments, a premier investment bank specializing in alternative energy finance, and S-Network Energy Technologies, LLC, a developer of indexes and investment products focused on both traditional and alternative energy. Ardour Global Indexes, LLC operates as an independent and unbiased source of primary information concerning alternative energy. Its family of indexes is supervised by an independent Index Committee, which includes individuals with long-term domestic and international experience in the field of alternative energy. The indexes are calculated and maintained by Dow Jones Indexes, a business unit of Dow Jones & Company. Detailed information, including constituent data, rules and price information, on the AGI family of alternative energy indexes is available at www.ardourglobalindexes.com, as well as through most major data vendors under the symbols AGIGL and AGIXL.
