TACOMA, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Russell Investments has added 213 “Greater China” stocks to the Russell Global Index as part of an annual process to maintain the most accurate equity benchmarks. As a result, the Russell Greater China Index, which comprises equity markets in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, represents USD$3.95 trillion in market capitalization, which outranks Japan (USD$3.34 trillion) and the United Kingdom (USD$2.14 trillion).

“Our annual process to fully reconstitute the Russell Global Index shows Greater China’s market capitalization increased about 13% in the past year,” said Rolf Agather, managing director for index research and innovation for Russell Investments. “It’s important for a global benchmark to capture and reflect the new reality for every market segment worldwide.”

The new membership lists for Greater China components of the Russell Global Index are available here: http://www.russell.com/Indexes/membership/default.asp.

The list of additions to the Russell Greater China Index includes seven initial public offerings: China Lodging Group, China Minzhong Food, Fook Woo Group Holdings, Huiyin Household Appliances Holdings, Lansen Pharmaceutical Holdings, O-Net Communications Group and Zhongsheng Group Holdings.

The newly reconstituted Russell Greater China Index shows:

• Hong Kong accounted for 90 of the additions, Taiwan for 66 and China for 57.
• The technology sector accounted for the most additions with 52 of the 213, and the consumer discretionary sector ranked second with 35.
• The weighting of stocks in the Russell Greater China Index shows China with 46%, Taiwan with 32.1% and Hong Kong with 21.9%.
• In terms of sector weights, financial services currently ranks first with 30.7% and technology ranks second with 21.6%.

Russell’s index reconstitution process is followed closely by many investors because $3.9 trillion in assets are benchmarked against them, and they account for an industry-leading 63.3% of institutional benchmarked products. Membership in Russell’s equity indexes—widely used as benchmarks for both passive and active investment strategies—is determined by objective rules. Accurate benchmarks are an integral part of Russell’s ongoing process to monitor more than 8,000 investment manager products worldwide for its $179 billion investment management business.