SAO PAULO and NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Dow Jones Indices ("S&P DJI"), one of the world's leading providers of financial market indices, today announced the launch of the S&P Brazil Sector Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Weighted Index. The Index is designed to measure the largest and most liquid stocks listed on the BM&F Bovespa weighted proportionately to the published Brazilian sector GDP figures.

"Brazil's equity market is highly concentrated in financial services and natural resource companies, thus traditional market capitalization weighted equity indices are not representative of the Brazilian economy," says Michael Orzano, Director of Global Equity Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "By weighting the constituents according to their GDP sector weights, the S&P Brazil Sector GDP Weighted Index provides investors with a transparent benchmark that reflects the growing, dynamic industries underrepresented in market cap weighted indices."

The underlying universe for the S&P Brazil Sector GDP Weighted Index is all stocks from the S&P Brazil Broad Market Index (BMI). The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®) sector for each of the 100 unique companies is mapped to the following Brazilian GDP sectors: Agriculture, Industrials, Financial Services and Non-Financial Services. The sectors are then weighted according to their annual GDP figures.

For more information, please visit: www.spdji.com.

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SOURCE S&P Dow Jones Indices