NEW YORK, June 24, 2009 — Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, LVA Indices (LVA), the leading fixed income index and pricing provider in Chile, and Proveedor Integral de Precios (PIP), a leading index and pricing provider in Latin America, today announced that they have signed a joint marketing agreement to help raise the profile and contribute to the transparency of the region’s growing fixed-income market. Under the agreement, the parties will calculate, market and license the Dow Jones LATixx Indexes, also launching today. The new indexes measure corporate and government bonds in major Latin American countries.
The first 10 indexes in the Dow Jones LATixx Index series represent the bond markets in Mexico and Chile. The five Dow Jones LATixx Indexes for Mexico have been licensed by Barclays Global Investors (BGI) to serve as the basis for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The ETFs are expected to be available in July.
This is the parties’ first step to establishing the Dow Jones LATixx Indexes as the region’s prime fixed-income index family. The partners expect to expand their initiative to include additional fixed-income indexes for markets such as Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Argentina.
“The bond market is the primary and most actively used investment vehicle in Latin America. Dow Jones Indexes has teamed up with LVA and PiP, two of the continent’s leading fixed-income experts, to create an index family that provides market participants with diversified exposure to this growing and exciting asset class. Furthermore, the Dow Jones LATixx Indexes can serve as the basis of passive financial products, such as the ETFs being launched by BGI,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes.
“Not only will we produce indexes that can be replicated in financial products, we also aim to create full families of indexes for each country, covering the entire range of instruments issued in their local fixed income markets. These broad market indexes will open up new possibilities for market participants, allowing the application of global best practices in measuring and analyzing portfolio risk and performance. Building such benchmarks for local fixed income investments has the added benefit of greater transparency and makes the market more attractive for foreign investors,” said Gregorio Gonzalez, CEO, LVA Indices.
“When we started to think about and discuss this partnership, we always saw the added value that the three of us together would bring to the LATAM region: experience, reputation, specialization, and commitment. In a few words I would say that our business culture is aligned. I am convinced that this will be a successful project and we will be moving beyond the expectations and needs of our clients. There is more to come, for sure.,” said Gerardo Luengas, chief executive officer, PiP
The five indexes for the Mexican fixed-income market measure the performance of specific types of government-issued bonds. The five new indexes for the Chilean fixed-income market include both government and corporate bonds.
The Dow Jones LATixx Indexes are reviewed on a monthly basis and daily back-tested historical data is available back to December 31, 20041 for the Mexican indexes, and back to January 1, 20011 for the Chilean indexes. Further information can be found on the Dow Jones LATixx Indexes Web site at http://www.latixx.com.
1 The Dow Jones LATixx Mexico Government UMS Index was first published on June 8, 2009, the remaining Dow Jones LATixx Indexes were first published on June 3rd, 2009. All estimated daily historical closing prices prior to that date are based on back-testing (i.e., calculations of how the index might have performed in the past if it had existed). Backtested performance information is purely hypothetical and is solely for informational purposes. Backtested performance does not represent actual performance, and past performance is not indicative of future results.