The new S&P Asia 50 index is market cap weighted, free-float adjusted and covers the leading companies of the region's four most important equity markets, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. The S&P Asia 50 covers approximately 60% of the region's market cap. The index country breakdown is as follows:
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S&P Asia 50 |
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| Country | # of companies | % of index |
| Hong Kong | 19 | 36% |
| Korea | 9 29% | |
| Taiwan | 14 20.5% | |
| Singapore | 8 14.5% | |
A partial list of constituents, weights and sectors is available as an addendum to this release and the full list can be accessed on the S&P Indices area of our website www.standardandpoors.com. The index will be available publicly from June 23 when it will also be added to the S&P Global 1200.
The S&P/ASX 50 is the leading large-cap index for Australia. Developed in collaboration with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), the S&P/ASX 50 is used as the basis for a variety of index-linked products and features a futures contract listed at ASX. The S&P/ASX 50 covers approximately 75% of Australia's market cap.
"The S&P Asia 50 was designed to represent the largest, most liquid and investable companies in Asia," said Robert Shakotko, global managing director for Standard & Poor's index business. "The S&P Asia 50, like several of the index components in the S&P 1200, builds on our relationships with local exchanges in the region, and will offer a more pure and indicative Asian index. As a component of the S&P Global 1200 and as a new regional index, the S&P Asia 50 is designed to support index-linked products that will enable investors to access the most liquid and investable segment of the market."
"The separation of the Australian and the Asian index components of the S&P Global 1200 enables us to better reflect how the marketplace has come to view equity markets in the region and showcases Standard & Poor's success in bringing Australian indices in line with other major markets worldwide," explained Tim Eisenhauer, director and head of Standard & Poor's Australian index services. "The S&P/ASX 50 tracks leading companies from Australia's leading industries, thus making it is a natural fit for our global index offering, the S&P Global 1200."
The S&P Global 1200, the world's first real-time global index, is comprised of seven regional indices including the S&P 500, the S&P Europe 350, the S&P/TSX 60 for Canada, the S&P/TOPIX 150 for Japan, the S&P Latin America 40, the S&P/ASX 50 for Australia and the S&P Asia index. It was designed to capture the liquid and investable portion of the global equity market, measuring performance across 30 countries and covering over 70% of the world's market cap.
| S&P Asia 50 Top 10 Constituents by Market Cap as of June 9, 2003 | ||||
| Country | Company Name | Adj Mkt Cap (US$ Mill) | % Weight | GICS Sector |
| Korea | Samsung Electronics | 37,944 | 14.3% | Information Technology |
| Taiwan | Taiwan Semiconductor | 15,869 | 6.0% | Information Technology |
| Hong Kong | Hutchison Whampoa Limited | 13,313 | 5.0% | Industrials |
| Hong Kong | China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited | 11,458 | 4.3% | Telecommunication Services |
| Singapore | United Overseas Bank Ltd. | 11,003 | 4.2% | Financials |
| Hong Kong | Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited | 9,410 | 3.6% | Financials |
| Korea | POSCO | 9,230 | 3.5% | Materials |
| Korea | Kookmin Bank Corp. | 8,203 | 3.1% | Financials |
| Hong Kong | Hang Seng Bank Limited | 7,597 | 2.9% | Financials |
| Hong Kong | CLP Holdings Limited | 7,427 | 2.8% | Utilities |
