Products July 14, 2008

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.
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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.

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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 .

Administration July 12, 2008

FL Short-Term Investments Better Off in Private Hands?

December 19, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The interim director of Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA) has recommended to members of the state cabinet that all of the Sunshine State's short-term investments be farmed out to private money managers.
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Bob Milligan made that assertion this week regarding everything from the state’s hurricane insurance fund to operating cash for the state’s pre-paid college funding program, according to a Tallahassee Democrat news report. Milligan is also lobbying cabinet members to institute a significant salary bump for the person hired as permanent SBA director to manage all of the state’s $175 billion in investments, including the state’s public pension fund.

Milligan told cabinet officials the new SBA chief should be paid $300,000 to $350,000 – a significant increase from the $182,000 paid to former director Coleman Stipanovich who left as a result of a crisis in the state’s Local Government Investment Pool centered around its subprime mortgage related investments.   

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Floridais already moving to privatize management of what remains of the $12 billion local government pool, after revelations it contained defaulted securities that caused its near collapse (See Florida OKs Local Govt. Pool Restructuring ).

Private management has already come at a cost. BlackRock, the fund’s new interim managers, charges up to $39 for every $10,000 invested, compared to $1.50 formerly charged by the state.

An independent audit committee is looking at the state’s purchase of mortgage-related securities as it prepares to hire consultants to investigate the SBA.

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