Zurich/Seoul (Oct. 20, 2009) — SAM, the investment boutique focused exclusively on Sustainability Investing, together with Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider and the Korea Productivity Center (KPC), the agency tasked to increase productivity within the Korean industry, today launch two dedicated sustainability indexes for Korea. The Dow Jones Sustainability Korea Index (DJSI Korea) is designed to track the sustainability leaders among South Korea’s 200 largest companies by free-float market capitalization. The current composition includes a total of 41 sustainability leaders.
The DJSI Korea is designed to underlie financial products such as exchange-traded or mutual funds and has already been licensed to serve as the basis of a mutual fund.
As a subset of this broad index, the Dow Jones Sustainability Korea 20 Index (DJSI Korea 20) measures the performance of the largest 20 sustainability leaders in the country. In contrast to the DJSI Korea, which is weighted according to free-float market capitalization, the DJSI Korea 20 is weighted based on SAM’s sustainability scores. Both indexes are reviewed annually in September.
KPC’s local expertise played a pivotal role in the development of the DJSI Korea. Combining KPC’s vision with the know-how of SAM and Dow Jones Indexes has resulted in two solid sustainability benchmarks for Korea. The DJSI Korea and DJSI Korea 20 further complement the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes family, which has become a key reference point in Sustainability Investing since the launch of the first index in 1999. The index series comprises 16 broad and blue-chip geographical benchmarks, as well as additional subset benchmarks.
The DJSI Korea and DJSI Korea 20 follow the well-established Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes methodology. Component selection as well as index weightings are based on SAM’s unique sustainability scores. The scores are derived from a comprehensive annual assessment of general as well as industry-specific criteria covering issues such as corporate governance, risk management, emissions, water and energy consumption, human capital development, and stakeholder relations.
Dow Jones Indexes calculates and disseminates the new benchmark while KPC will promote the index among Korean corporations and investors. The indexes are rebalanced quarterly and calculated in Korean won and U.S. dollar.
For more information on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes please visit http://www.sustainability-indexes.com.
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