"While mutual funds are a key part of the investment landscape used by a growing number of European investors, the only performance measures are broad based averages, not investible indices," said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the S&P Index Committees, Standard & Poor's. "The S&P ERFI represents a diversified cross-section of managers who have passed S&P's quantitative and qualitative selection process which is designed to ensure that the constituent funds are stable and valid representatives of their purported investing styles."
The S&P ERFI series currently includes 12 funds each from European Equity, U.S. Equity, and Global Fixed Income. European Equity includes funds with investment mandates across continental Europe and the United Kingdom; U.S. Equity includes funds focused across the mid- to large capitalization markets in the U.S.; Global Fixed Income includes fixed income funds with investment mandates across major world markets. Markets under consideration for subsequent index coverage include Japanese/Asian Pacific Equities and Emerging Markets.
Under the oversight of an S&P Index Committee, S&P ERFI constituents are selected from a broad universe of funds in the proprietary Standard & Poor's Funds database. The funds are screened to identify those that have a high correlation to their peers, thereby improving representativeness and have a minimum three-year track record. In addition, to facilitate investibility, all index candidates must be UCITS-compliant and registered for sale in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The candidates then undergo a qualitative review that includes examination of manager/team tenure and experience, organizational depth, fund philosophy and process, style consistency, tracking results to benchmarks and other factors as appropriate.
Standard & Poor's anticipates that there will be interest in licensing the S&P ERFI series as the basis for investment products such as fund of funds and structured products seeking to replicate index returns.
The S&P ERFI series daily index values with a one-day lag are available on the Standard & Poor's website, as well as via Bloomberg tickers SPERFIEE, SPERFIUS, and SPERFIFI. More information about the construction methodology, index history, and constituents is available on www.indices.standardandpoors.com.
Standard & Poor's does not sponsor, endorse, sell, or promote any investment fund or other vehicle that is offered by third parties and that seeks to provide an investment return based on the returns of the S&P Europe-Registered Funds Index.
About Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE:MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research, data and valuations. With 5000 employees located in 20 countries, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for more than 140 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com.
