Bancherul - BANCI / ENGLISH / S&P Launches Global Agribusiness Composite Index

Standard & Poor’s, the world’s leading index provider, today announced the launch of the first index to offer exposure to both equities and commodities across the entire agribusiness industry, said the company in a statement.

The newly-launched S&P Global Agribusiness Composite Index incorporates the new S&P Global Agribusiness Index and the existing S&P GSCI Agriculture and Livestock Index, which is a subset of the S&P GSCI designed to provide liquid exposure to the agriculture and livestock commodities markets through futures contracts.

“The new S&P Global Agribusiness Composite Index provides complete exposure to the global agribusiness industry by combining the downstream exposure offered by equities with the upstream exposure available through commodities. This composite model provides lower volatility for investors and capitalises on S&P’s strengths in both markets,” commented Steven Goldin, Vice President, Portfolio Services for Standard & Poor’s.

The introduction of the S&P Global Agribusiness Index offers flexibility to investors who want a pure equity exposure to this segment. It consists of 24 of the largest publicly-traded agribusiness companies from around the world with developed market listings that meet minimum market capitalization and liquidity requirements. The index is comprised of a diversified mix of Producers, Distributors & Processors, and Equipment & Materials Suppliers companies.

One-year returns, at 30 April 2008, were 40.34% for the S&P Global Agribusiness Composite Index and 54.43% for the S&P Global Agribusiness Index.

Both the S&P Global Agribusiness Composite and the S&P Global Agribusiness Indices are part of the S&P Global Thematic Index Series. The series provides liquid exposure to emerging investment themes that cut across traditional industry definitions and geographical boundaries. The indices are calculated by means of a modified market capitalization-weighting scheme and rebalanced annually after the close on the third Friday of November. There are no intra-year index additions. Deletions can occur due to acquisitions, mergers and spin-offs, bankruptcies or suspensions, or when the company no longer represents the market.

For more information on the indices, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices

About Standard & Poor’s Index Services
Standard & Poor’s Index Services, the world’s leading index provider, maintains a wide variety of investable and benchmark indices to meet an array of investor needs. Its family of indices includes the S&P 500, an index with $1.32 trillion invested and $4.91 trillion benchmarked, and the S&P Global 1200, a composite index comprised of seven regional and country headline indices. For more information, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices