Stoxx, a leading global index provider headquartered in Zurich, has unveiled the Stoxx Global Broad Infrastructure Index, a new index which captures the performance of the largest companies in the global infrastructure industry.

Stoxx’s new global broad infrastructure index measures the equity performance of the largest companies in the global infrastructure industry.

The index has been licensed to FlexShares, the exchange-traded funds brand of Northern Trust, for launch of the ETF on the NYSE Arca.

Hartmut Graf, chief executive officer, Stoxx, said: “With the global need for infrastructure estimated to be about $40 trillion, market participants require a well-defined approach to understand the listed global infrastructure universe. The Stoxx Global Broad Infrastructure Index identifies these companies and combines them in a transparent index concept, offering users an efficient, rules-based and diversified solution for their benchmarking and passive investment needs.”

Shundrawn Thomas, head of FlexShares at Northern Trust, noted: “We saw great synergy with Stoxx’s new index and our own philosophy of flexible indexing. The index offers low historical correlation, defensive nature and income generation benefits of infrastructure securities.”

The index universe for the Stoxx Global Broad Infrastructure Index is defined as all emerging and developed markets stocks in the Stoxx Global Total Market Index. To be eligible for inclusion, companies must have a minimum average daily trading volume (ADTV) of $1 million and generate at least half of their revenues from the following five sectors: communications, energy, government outsourcing/social, transportation and utilities.

To identify eligible firms and ensure they derive 50% or more of their revenues from infrastructure-related business, Stoxx has partnered with FactSet, a global provider of financial analytics and information, to use the FactSet Revere Sector and Industry Classifications and FactSet Supply Chain Relationships datasets.

The index currently has 155 components. Top companies by free-float market capitalization include AT&T, Canadian National Railway Co. and Deutsche Post.

The index is weighted by free-float market capitalization and calculated in price, net return and gross return versions. The index is available in euros and US dollar. The index is reviewed annually in January. Daily historical data is available back to March 16, 2007.