World's First Investable Index to Focus on Emerging Market Companies with Low Carbon Footprints; Index Developed in Partnership with International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group

COPENHAGEN, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's (S&P), the world's leading index provider, today announced the launch of the S&P/IFCI Carbon Efficient Index which measures the performance of investable emerging market companies whose weighting in the Index is based in part on their level of carbon emissions. The Index is also designed to closely track the parent S&P/IFCI LargeMidCap Index, Standard & Poor's leading emerging markets benchmark.

The new S&P/IFCI Carbon Efficient Index provides investors with 24% less exposure to carbon emissions when compared with the parent index, the S&P/IFCI LargeMidCap Index. At launch, the Index covers 21 emerging markets, including Brazil, Russia, India and China, and more than 800 companies.

Standard & Poor's and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, launched the new Index at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen today. At the conference, David Blitzer, Head of Standard & Poor's Index Committee, is taking part in a panel discussion on low carbon investing and indexing alongside Rob Lake, Head of Sustainability, APG - Dutch pension fund, Ole Sorensen, Chief of Research and Strategy, ATP - the largest Danish pension fund, and Carla Tully, Climate Change Coordinator, Inter-American Development Bank. The panel discussion will be hosted by Rachel Kyte, IFC Vice President for Business Advisory Services.

Speaking in Copenhagen today, David Blitzer said: "Emerging markets are critical to tackling climate change and currently represent more than 11% of the global equity market, as well as a rapidly growing share of carbon emissions. Institutional investors and plan sponsors increasingly want to factor carbon efficiency into their investment decisions, and S&P's carbon efficient indices - a U.S. index was launched earlier this year - provide powerful tools to enable them to reduce their carbon exposure without abandoning their investment strategy or experiencing below-market returns.

"In the past, simplistic screening approaches eliminated whole sectors or industries - such as airlines, utilities or oil companies - which created skewed portfolios. S&P's approach maintains the balance between economic sectors and countries, while adjusting individual company weightings to reduce investor exposure to the carbon footprint. As a result, the Index meets the dual goals of reducing carbon exposure while keeping the performance differential between the carbon efficient index and its parent index, known as the 'tracking error,' at moderate levels. Over the last 3 years, the tracking error has been less than 1.48%."

Rachel Kyte, IFC Vice President for Business Advisory Services said, "With growing pressure on investors to diversify and maintain returns by increasing exposure to emerging markets, and with more and more investors keen to demonstrate a preference for sustainability including carbon efficient companies, IFC hopes that the launch of this index will help ensure that carbon efficiency is rewarded in the market and that 'best in class' companies gain better access to capital."

The S&P/IFCI Carbon Efficient Index retains all the same constituents as the parent index, but with index weights adjusted by comparing companies within the same global sectors, utilizing the Carbon Footprint as calculated by Trucost Plc, the environmental data organization. This is defined as the company's annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions assessment, expressed as tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), divided by annual revenues.

The Index is part of S&P's expanding family of carbon efficient and other green indices and follows the launch of the S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index and thematic indices covering the global clean energy, water, alternative and nuclear energy sectors.

As with all S&P's indices, any addition, deletion or re-weighting of a company is not an investment recommendation or evaluation of the company. For more information about S&P Indices or to download a whitepaper on the new index, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About S&P Indices

S&P Indices, the world's leading index provider, maintains a wide variety of investable and benchmark indices to meet an array of investor needs. Over $1 trillion is directly indexed to Standard & Poor's family of indices, which includes the S&P 500, the world's most followed stock market index, the S&P Global 1200, a composite index comprised of seven regional and country headline indices, the S&P Global BMI, an index with approximately 11,000 constituents, and the S&P GSCI, the industry's most closely watched commodities index. For more information, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With offices in 23 countries and markets, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for nearly 150 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit http://www.standardandpoors.com.

SOURCE Standard & Poor's

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