DJSI launches two new European indexes
London, 2 February: The firms behind the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) series have launched two new indexes of European 'blue-chip' stocks, weighted according to their sustainability score rather than market capitalisation.

"Over the last years, we have not only seen growing interest in sustainability, but also rising demand for indexes that use other weighting factors than market cap," says Lars Hamich, managing director of European index specialist STOXX. "This alternative weighting scheme ensures that the leading companies in the context of sustainability will always have the highest weighting in the index, regardless of size," he adds.

STOXX, US-based index provider Dow Jones and Switzerland's SAM Group, which specialises in socially responsible investment research and asset management, jointly produce the two existing European indexes in the DJSI family, and will also collaborate on the new indexes.

Known as the Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability 40 Index and the Dow Jones EURO STOXX Sustainability 40 Index, these will comprise the largest 40 firms from the Dow Jones STOXX and Dow Jones EURO STOXX Sustainability Indexes. These existing indexes have 156 and 72 constituents, respectively, with the former including firms from the whole of Europe while the latter is restricted to the eurozone countries.

The reason for picking the 40 largest firms is to offer investorsan index of the most liquid and tradable stocks, says Alex Barkawi, managing director of SAM's index arm.

More than $4 billion is managed in investment vehicles based on DJSI products, and Barkawi says that there has already been interest in launching products against the new indexes.