First Global Blue-Chip ETF to Make Debut in Europe

April 25, 2001

AXA Investment Managers To Launch Exchange-Traded Fund At Euronext

NEW YORK (Apr. 25, 2001) — Exchange-traded funds are gaining favor among investors in Europe. Now for the first time, European investors will be able to buy or sell exchange-traded funds linked to the performance of a global blue-chip index. Dow Jones Indexes has signed a license agreement with AXA Investment Managers, under which the European group will list an exchange-traded fund based on the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 index.

Mike Petronella, Managing Director of Dow Jones Indexes said: “Low component turnover, a limited number of index components and high liquidity makes the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 an ideal underlying for an exchange-traded fund. Through the AXA Investment Managers’ fund European investors, like their U.S. counterparts, will be able to buy 50 of the world’s largest and most important companies as a single security.”

Timothy Ryan, Head of Quantitative Research and Management of AXA Investment Managers said: “We chose the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 to offer European investors 50 of the world’s leading multinational corporations. This is the first global index to be published 24 hours a day. And just before we issued our EasyETF GLOBAL TITANS 50, the index was used as the basis for a futures contract.”

AXA Investment Managers expect their new series called EasyETF to begin trading at Euronext on April 25th.

Exchange-traded funds are “baskets” of securities similar to a mutual fund, except that they trade like individual stocks. Most of them are “index funds” that track the performance of a specified index for a country, a region or a sector. These investment vehicles are very popular in the United States and Canada - and are becoming so in Europe - because investors find buying or selling diversified portfolios of securities in a single transaction to be cost-effective and efficient.

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Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to or contact Dow Jones Indexes press office:

New York: +1-212-597-5720
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Hong Kong: +852-800-969-336
Singapore: +65-6-4154-299

About Dow Jones Indexes

Dow Jones Indexes is a leading full-service index provider that develops, maintains and licenses indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products. Best-known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes offers more than 130,000 equity indexes as well as fixed-income and alternative indexes, including measures of hedge funds, commodities and real estate. Dow Jones Indexes employs clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. Dow Jones Indexes is the marketing name for CME Group Index Services LLC, a joint venture company which is owned 90 percent by CME Group Inc. and 10 percent by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., a News Corporation company (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV).

"Dow Jones®," "Dow Jones Indexes," and all other index names listed above are service marks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC ("Dow Jones"), and have been licensed for use by CME Group Index Services LLC ("CME Indexes").

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