Standard & Poor’s Announces March Quarterly Rebalance To The S&P/ASX Indices

Standard & Poor’s Index Services, the leading provider of equity indices in Australia, today announced that the following constituent additions and deletions will take place in the S&P/ASX indices from the close of trade March 20, 2008.

The March quarterly rebalance is the most comprehensive review of S&P/ASX indices, where each index portfolio from the S&P/ASX 20 through to the All Ordinaries index is reviewed in order to maintain a representative index suite. A full stock free-float review is also conducted at the March rebalance.

S&P/ASX index methodology, together with sensible index governance, has limited the scope of index constituent changes despite severe market conditions. “Despite major volatility within the Australian market, the smoothing of stock-price information inherent in our methodology has limited the number of constituent changes to the S&P/ASX 200 portfolio,” said Simon Karaban, associate director at Standard & Poor’s Index Services. “We have maintained the cost-effectiveness of passive investment portfolios by successfully limiting index portfolio turnover within a volatile environment.”

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