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STOXX Limited, the market-moving provider of innovative, tradable and global index concepts, today celebrates its 15th anniversary. The first pan-European, STOXX-branded indices were launched on February 26, 1998. The Board of Directors and the Management Board of STOXX Limited gathered at an official celebration ceremony in Hong Kong today to mark this occasion.
The STOXX Indices were introduced in advance of the introduction of the Euro to provide market participants with transparent and strictly rules-based indices for Europe. The EURO STOXX 50 was the first index to measure the performance of the Euro zone. In the past 15 years, STOXX has developed from being the leading European index provider to becoming a global firm well-known for its innovative range of strategy indices. The company is part of Deutsche Börse and SIX, and is also the marketing agent for the DAX and SMI indices.
To highlight the importance of the global markets to STOXX, the index provider today launched the STOXX China A 50 Index, a blue-chip index that comprises the 50 largest Chinese A-Shares and follows STOXX’s established blue-chip index methodology.
“STOXX has always been a company of visionary innovation, from the launch of the EURO STOXX 50 Index in 1998 to the global expansion of our index family and re-branding in 2011. Today, we are still as dedicated as we were 15 years ago to developing neutral, strictly rules-based and transparent indices that meet the high standards our clients know and expect from us,” said Hartmut Graf, chief executive officer, STOXX Limited. “The launch of the STOXX China A 50 Index at our anniversary celebration in Hong Kong underscores the importance of the Asian region for STOXX. Our new index is geared towards market participants who expect high prosperity levels in the Year of the Water Snake, and want to participate in the performance of China’s largest 50 A-shares.”
The new STOXX China A 50 Index is derived from the STOXX China A Total Market Index, which covers approximately 95% of the free float market capitalization of the investable stock universe of Chinese A-Shares, which are traded in domestic currency at the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges and are reserved for domestic enterprises and individuals, as well as qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIIs). All companies in the parent index are sorted by free-float adjusted market capitalization and the 50 largest are selected for inclusion in the blue-chip index.
The STOXX China A 50 Index is reviewed annually in September and rebalanced quarterly. The index is available in Euro, U.S. dollar, HK dollar and Chinese Renminbi.
After the index company’s founding, the STOXX indices emerged as the most popular underlying for European index-based investment products such as exchange traded funds (ETFs), futures & options, structured products and passively managed investment funds. In April 2000, the EURO STOXX 50 Index and STOXX Europe 50 indices were used as the basis for the first equity ETFs that were ever launched in Europe.
Today, the STOXX Global Index Family covers 65 countries and over 9,000 companies. STOXX holds the world’s number three position in the derivatives segment. There were also 538.031 Structured Products (SPs) issued on the STOXX, DAX and SMI indices in 2012, making STOXX the strongest index provider in the SPs space. As of January 31, 2013, there were 285 ETFs listed on the STOXX, DAX and SMI indices globally.
For more information, please visit www.stoxx.com.
