NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Dow Jones Indices, the world's largest provider of financial market indices, announced today the launch of the S&P Merger Arbitrage Index, which seeks to model a risk arbitrage strategy that exploits commonly observed price changes associated with a global selection of publicly announced mergers, acquisitions or other corporate reorganizations. The Index has been licensed to ProShares to serve as the basis for an upcoming ProShares ETF.

"The S&P Merger Arbitrage Index aims to address the market's continued interest in a merger arbitrage strategy says Vinit Srivastava, director of strategy indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "This offering expands our family of long-only merger arbitrage indices and further builds our capabilities in the alternative indexing space." 

The S&P Merger Arbitrage Index (the "Index") is comprised of stocks that are active in pending merger deals. At any given time, a maximum of 40 companies that are currently targets in merger deals are represented in the Index in long positions and a maximum of 40 companies that are currently acquirers for the same stock merger deals are represented in short positions.

The S&P Merger Arbitrage Index includes two sub-indices which represent the long and the short components of the headline Index separately –

• S&P Merger Arbitrage - Long Index
• S&P Merger Arbitrage - Short Index

For more information on the S&P Merger Arbitrage Indices, please visit: www.spindices.com.

About S&P Dow Jones Indices

S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is the world's largest, global resource for index-based concepts, data and research. Home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500^® and the Dow Jones Industrial Average^SM, S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC has over 115 years of experience constructing innovative and transparent solutions that fulfill the needs of institutional and retail investors. More assets are invested in products based upon our indices than any other provider in the world. With over 830,000 indices covering a wide range of assets classes across the globe, S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC defines the way investors measure and trade the markets. To learn more about our company, please visit www.spdji.com.

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SOURCE S&P Dow Jones Indices