NEW YORK (January 11, 2010)—Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced that it has been named “Best Islamic Index Provider” in the Islamic Finance News (IFN) award poll for the third consecutive year.
The Islamic Finance News award poll is conducted annually by Malaysia-based Islamic Finance News. In 2009, more than 2,600 votes from Islamic finance product issuers, investors, non-banking financial intermediaries and government bodies from around the world determined the leaders in 45 categories.
“We are honored to receive this prestigious award for the third year in a row. It shows yet again that the strict standards, objectivity and reliability of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes are key to the Islamic finance world. As Islamic finance grows and evolves worldwide, Dow Jones Indexes remains committed to further foster and shape Shari’ah-compliant indexing by providing innovative and meaningful Islamic indexes,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes.
The Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes were introduced in 1999 as the first indexes intended to measure the global universe of investable equities that pass screens for Shari’ah compliance. With more than 100 indexes, the series is the most comprehensive family of Islamic market measures and includes regional, country, and industry indexes, all of which are subsets of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index. An independent Shari’ah Supervisory Board counsels Dow Jones Indexes on matters related to the compliance of index-eligible companies.
In the past six years, the Dow Jones Islamic Market index series has won 19 industry awards by organizations, research institutions and magazines around the world; amongst them are the International Islamic Finance Forum, the Kuala Lumpur Islamic Finance Forum, the Islamic Center of Southern California, Global Finance magazine, Islamic Business and Finance magazine, Islamic Finance News and Incisive Media.
There are currently more than 150 licensees with more than US$7 billion in assets benchmarked to the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes. For more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, please visit http://www.djindexes.com.