Sustainable Investment - The platform for saving and investing money in a sustainable way

Index

Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index

Principles

The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) family is derived from and fully integrated with the Dow Jones Global Indexes. The DJSI North America tracks the financial performance of the top 20% in terms of sustainability of the 600 biggest North American companies in the Dow Jones World Index. The DJSI United States is the US subset of the DJSI North America.

The analysis consists of general as well as industry specific criteria. The index provider believes that corporate sustainability increases shareholder value in the long run. In addition to the composite DJSI North America, a regional subset - the Dow Jones Sustainability United States Index (DJSI United States) - derived from this benchmark covers the sustainability leaders in the US. Furthermore, for both indexes specialized subsets are available that exclude companies with an exposure to tobacco, alcohol, gambling, armaments and the firearms industry.

Excluding criteria

Excluding criteria are only considered in the specialized indexes. These exclude companies which are active in certain industries e.g. alcohol, gambling, tobacco, armaments and firearms.

Positive criteria

The company selection process for the indexes is done based on a corporate sustainability assessment and is carried out by SAM. According to SAM this assessment allows the calculation of a sustainability performance key-figure for each company. The sustainability performance reflects the company's ability to create economic, social and ecological added value and is the result of a process to analyze and assess sustainability. The Corporate Sustainability Assessment can be divided into three levels:

	The company selection process for the indexes is done based on a corporate sustainability assessment and is carried out by SAM. According to SAM this assessment allows the calculation of a sustainability performance key-figure for each company. The sustainability performance reflects the company's ability to create economic, social and ecological added value and is the result of a process to analyze and assess sustainability. The Corporate Sustainability Assessment can be divided into three levels:
	quality and publicly accessibility of documents
	verification

The criteria for the sustainability assessment of a company cover for example the following areas:

	strategic planning
	organisational learning
	environmental performance
	external stakeholders
	corporate governance

A full listing of the general criteria and the weighting can be found at:

http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/htmle/assessment/criteria

The questionnaire's general part and as an example for the industry specific approach for the pharmaceutical industry can be viewed at:

http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/htmle/assessment/infosources.html

The sustainability performance key-figure of a company is calculated using SAM Information Management System (SIMS)The answers to the questionnaire along with the results of the quality of the publicly accessible information and the verification factor are evaluated along well defined rating and weighting parameters. The result, the so called Corporate Sustainability Score, is the key-figure for the company's sustainability performance. It can be corrected at any time should a test reveal any engagement into critical activities.

Research done by

SAM Research

Funds based on the index	According to the index provider 56 licenses have been issued since the introduction of the DJSI (Date 12/31/2005) A list of licensees can be found at: http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/htmle/other/licensing.html
Finance-/tech. - support by	Dow Jones Index
Benchmark	Dow Jones Global Index
Company profiles	n. s.