September 28, 2005—SAM Group has expanded its family of Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) with dedicated benchmarks for North America and the United States. The Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index and Dow Jones Sustainability United States Index will comprise the top companies in terms of economic, environmental, and social criteria from the two regions and provide solid benchmarks for sustainability-driven North American and US equity portfolios.
SAM and Dow Jones Indexes introduced the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index as the world’s first global sustainability benchmark in 1999. In 2001, the two partners were joined by STOXX Limited to expand the offering with European and Eurozone indexes. Today, the DJSI family is licensed to investment firms in 14 countries as underlying and benchmark for a variety of financial products including mutual funds, separate accounts, structured products and an exchange traded fund listed on Euronext. In total, over $4 billion are presently managed in DJSI-based investment vehicles.
The new indexes will follow the same assessment methodology already established for the global, European, and Eurozone indexes. Accounting for issues such as corporate governance, climate change, supply chain standards, human capital development, and labor practices, the analysis ranks companies in terms of sustainability in every industry. For the DJSI North America, the top 20% in each sector out of the biggest 600 North American companies are selected as index members. Thus far, 111 firms —93 from the US and 18 from Canada—are included in the new index.
For more on the index, see the Web site.
