| Dow Jones Indexes has unveiled three regional and country indexes that track the highest-yielding stocks in the Asia/Pacific region, Asia, and Japan. The Dow Jones Asia/Pacific Select Dividend 30 index has been licensed to serve as the underlying index for two exchange-traded funds. It covers companies in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore. The indexes, announced Tuesday by the Dow Jones & Co. unit, measure the performance of the top 30 stocks by dividend yield in their markets. Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea are represented by the Dow Jones Asia Select Dividend 30. The Dow Jones Japan Select Dividend 30 index is the first dividend-based index for Japan, according to Dow Jones. To be included in one of the indexes, a company must have paid dividends in each of the previous three years, and dividend-per-share in the previous year must be greater than or equal to its three-year average. A company's five-year average dividend payout cannot be more than 85% of its per-share earnings or greater than 1.5 times the payout ratio of the corresponding Dow Jones country index. That is to assure dividend quality, Dow Jones said. |
