Over US$7bn benchmarked to the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes: albawaba.com

Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider launched its first Islamic index in 1999 and commemorating its 10th anniversary it hosted a round table discussion on the changing dynamics of global finance and its impact on economies in the Middle East, the growing importance of Islamic finance and the role it can play in stabilizing local economies.

Moderating the discussion, Mr. Jamie Farmer, senior director operations and exchange relations, Dow Jones Indexes, said “2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes. This is an important milestone for Dow Jones Indexes who pioneered the space of Islamic indexes and provided institutions with a tool to benchmark the performance of Shari’ah compliant portfolios. To commemorate what we believe has been a decade of successfully indexing Islamic equities, we today commence our worldwide anniversary events with a round table discussion in Dubai.”

Stating that Dow Jones Indexes was the first index provider who developed a method for screening equity indexes according to Shari’ah law, Mr. Sumeet Nihalani, senior director, Asia-Pacific and Middle East, Dow Jones Indexes, said “Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes were created to serve as an indication or benchmark for institutional investors when deciding their portfolio or comparing the performance of their portfolios. Today, this index family is used as benchmark and basis for many investment products as they reflect investor sentiment.”

The Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index was launched in February 1999 as the first benchmark to measure the performance of a global universe of Shari’ah-compliant investable equities. Over the past decade, the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index series has expanded to more than 100 indexes for all major established and emerging financial markets, regions and sectors. Amongst these are Islamic indexes for the ASEAN, BRIC and GCC regions as well as for global and Malaysian blue-chips.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Over US$7bn benchmarked to the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes: albawaba.com