S&P indexes India's leading 60 companies

Standard & Poor’s (S&P), one out of three foremost credit rating companies on Monday released the top 60 Indian companies in terms of size, liquidity and tradability requirements to provide global investors with data on tradable exposure.

In its latest released list, S&P on August 25 released the ‘India Select Index’ enlisting 60 most potential companies including some heavyweights - Infosys, ONGC, Reliance Industries, BHEL, Larsen & Toubro and Hindustan Lever - in terms of trading potential.

The ratings firm has prepared the index on the basis of stock’s weight of the companies with no single scrip representing a weight more than 10 per cent. The stocks weight is scaled up on the basis of ‘what is legally and practically available to foreign investors’.

R. Ravimohan, the Managing Director and Head of Standard & Poor’s South and Southeast Asia said on this latest index release, “The new S&P India Select Index was developed in response to growing investor demand for access to the leading companies in India. The index has a pool of easily accessible underlying stocks that provides a unique way for international investors to take part in India’s growth story.”

To be eligible for inclusion in the S&P India Select Index, as per S&P stated in the release, the ‘companies must have a float-adjusted market capitalisation above US$ 500 million and a three-month average daily trading value above US$ 2 million.’

Moreover, ‘each eligible stock must be trading on the National Stock Exchange of India’ and stocks that have reached the maximum percentage holding for Foreign Institutional Investors are excluded from the index to reflect the lack of access of those stocks to foreign investors,’ as said in an official release.

Telecommunications, consumer staples, utilities, finance, energy, materials, industrials, information technology and health care are some leading sectors included in the list.

The top ten holdings by percentage of index weight are: Infosys Technologies (5.49%), Bharti Airtel (5.48%), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) (5.31%), Reliance Communications (5.29%), Housing Development Corporation (HDC) (5.23%), Reliance Industries (4.76%), ICICI Bank (4.40), Hindustan Lever Ltd.(HLL) (4.17%), Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (BHEL) (3.71%), and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) (3.25).