Dow Jones Launches Third GCC Index

July 14, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today launched the Dow Jones GCC Titans 40 Index - the third in its efforts to build a family of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) indexes.

The Dow Jones GCC Titans 40 Index measures the performance of 40 component stocks traded in five of the six GCC member states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE). It has been licensed to Van Eck Global, a provider of global investment products, to serve as the basis for an exchange-traded fund – the first time that a pure GCC index has been licensed to underlie an ETF, according to a Dow Jones press release.

“As part of the Titans index family, this index represents the biggest and most liquid investable blue-chip stocks for the GCC region and facilitates investor participation in an important world market,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes, in the announcement.

The Dow Jones GCC Titans 40 Index is weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization. Weights of individual stocks are capped at 8% in each country, with a maximum of 15 companies per country without an additional cap on country weights. Stocks must have an average daily trading volume of $1 million to be qualified for the index.

Eligible securities are ranked by float-adjusted market capitalization, with the top three companies in each of the five countries being automatically selected as index components. Additional components are selected top-down from the pool of all remaining companies until 40 components are reached. Back-tested estimated daily index history will be available back to December 31, 2003.

The index is calculated in U.S. dollars and reviewed annually in June.

More information is at www.djindexes.com .

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