Russell Investments has added companies in Vietnam to the Russell Global Index for the first time
Nine Vietnamese firms qualified for addition as a result of the annual reconstitution process and were added to the global index as well as several sub-components such as the Russell Emerging Markets Index, Russell Asia Index and Russell Asia Pacific Index.
"The Russell Vietnam Index is an important addition to our comprehensive family of global indexes," said Stephen Wood, senior portfolio strategist for Russell.
"The annual reconstitution process captures the changing fortunes within key markets, such as this good news in Vietnam, and recalibrates the indexes to accurately measure current realities. This process gives investors truly representative benchmarks to better gauge the performance of their stock portfolios or retirement plans."
The nine additions are Corporation for Financing & Promoting Technology, SaiGon Thuong Tin Commercial JSB, PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services JSC, Tan Tao Investment-Industry Corp., PetroVietnam Fertilizer & Chemicals Corp., Vietnam Dairy Products JSC, PhaLai Thermal Power JSC, Vincom JSC and Saigon Securities Inc.
Each of these companies also is included in the Russell Global Small Cap Index. Three are in the materials and processing sector, while six are designated as value companies and three as growth companies.
Membership in Russell's equity indexes are widely used as benchmarks for passive and active investment strategies and are determined by objective rules, such as market capitalization rankings.
Accurate benchmarks are an integral part of Russell's ongoing process to monitor more than 8,000 investment manager products worldwide for Russell's $213 billion active investment management business. Russell's U.S. indexes currently have $4.4 trillion in assets benchmarked against them and account for an industry-leading 58.5% of institutional benchmarked products.
The official list is available at
http://www.russell.com/Indexes/membership/Reconstitution/default.asp.
About Russell
Russell Investments provides strategic advice, world-class implementation, state-of-the-art performance benchmarks and a range of institutional-quality investment products. Russell has more than $213 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2008, and serves individual, institutional and advisor clients in more than 40 countries.
Russell's industry-leading indexes have $4.4 trillion in assets benchmarked to them as of Dec. 31, 2007. Founded in 1936, Russell is a subsidiary of The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Russell Investments
Steve Claiborne, 253-439-1858 newsroom@russell.com