The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange has announced that it and the Hanoi Stock Exchange have been included in the FTSE ASEAN Index series, Nhan Dan (People) online newspaper reported on June 4.

Previously, the FTSE ASEAN Index only represented stocks from financial markets of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The inclusion of Vietnam’s two stock exchanges came with the addition of three new indices to the FTSE ASEAN Index family, namely the FTSE ASEAN All Share Index, the FTSE ASEAN Stars Index and the FTSE ASEAN All Share ex Developed Index.

It is expected that the updated FTSE ASEAN Index family would bring more benefits to investors and increase the liquidity of ASEAN financial markets.

The FTSE ASEAN All-Share Index is designed to represent the performance of large, mid and small cap ASEAN companies while the FTSE ASEAN Stars Index comprises 30 companies from each ASEAN exchange, with the exception of Vietnam where 15 companies are selected from the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Exchanges respectively.

The seven ASEAN stock exchanges have a total capitalisation of nearly 2 trillion USD with around 3,600 listed companies, including many of the world’s largest in energy, banking, telecommunications and automobiles.-VNA