S&P Dow Jones opens 2nd largest operation centre at BSE

Asia Index, a joint venture between S&P Dow Jones and BSE, on Wednesday opened a new operation centre at the BSE premises, its second-largest operation centre after the one in New York.

“The centre will cater to the growing index-investing needs of this market and provide back-office support for our global operations,” said S&P Dow Jones Indices chief executive Alexander Matturri. The centre would employ 60 people across research, product design, marketing, sales and IT operations, he added..

The New York-based S&P Dow Jones Indices, the world’s largest index provider, had entered into a 50:50 joint venture with the oldest Asian bourse last February to provide an array of indices enabling global and domestic investors to participate in South Asia’s vibrant economies.

With the Sensex scaling new highs in anticipation of strong growth ahead, S&P Dow Jones Indices is looking at growing its business by introducing more products in this market.

"We are looking at growing here by introducing more products. We are looking at more asset classes in the fixed income and commodities space. We have different strategies like smart data, alternate data and thematic data, and are also looking at several themes, which we are reviewing and researching on," Asia Index (rpt) Asia Index managing director Alka Banerjee said.

Asia Index has 35 products and has successfully launched four new indices last year, which includes S&P BSE India Sovereign Bond Index, BSE Shariah Index, Sensex Futures and the S&P BSE India Infrastructure Index.

"We will come out at fairly rapid pace of launching new indices in next few months," Banerjee added.

S&P Dow Jones provides data for over tens of thousands of indices and subsets around the world, covering all major markets, including over 50 emerging markets, and all major asset classes.

"After entering into a JV with the BSE, over the past one year, we are having good success in terms of bringing indices of global standards important in new regulatory environment. The process of developing new indices will continue and we will commercialise them and get them used by investors' benchmarks on the basis of investment products," Matturri said.

India is a very important market in terms of opportunities for us. This is a place where we see lot of long term growth opportunities, he said adding, "We see this market as a much better economy than the other BRIC members.