BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Solidere and BLOM Bank stocks joined the S&P AFE 40, a pan-Arabian stock index that will measure the performance of 40 leading companies from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
Solidere and BLOM Bank stocks will feature on the index that has been conceived and launched in a partnership with the Arab Federation of Exchanges, the Beirut Stock Exchange said in a statement released Monday.
The S&P AFE 40 includes the 40 largest stocks as measured by float-adjusted market capitalization listed on AFE member exchanges.
Each listed stock must have at least $50 million in value traded over 12 months, there can be no more than 10 stocks per country, based on domicile, and at least one stock from each country must be included.
The S&P AFE 40 uses a capped market capitalization weighted index scheme, where the maximum weight of any constituent cannot exceed 10 percent of the index and the maximum weight for each country, based on domicile, cannot exceed 35 percent.
“The S&P AFE 40 is expected to be an important blue chip index in the Pan-Arab region, offering a true representation of the performance of leading, publicly traded companies trading on Arabian exchanges.
We are excited to partner with one of the leading index providers in the world, S&P Indices, to offer this exciting, new benchmark to investors,” S&P quoted Fadi Khalaf, secretary general at the Arab Federation of Exchanges as saying.
