Nomura will develop new fixed income indices as part of new collaboration with S&P Dow Jones Indices, based on the Japanese investment bank’s Bond Performance Index (BPI).
Nomura’s BPI measures the movement of Japanese fixed income products in the secondary market and is calculated from the return on investment of a portfolio of all fixed income securities that meet certain criteria.
Established index provider S&P Dow Jones Indices, which provides leading markets indicators the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, will develop a family of co-branded indices with Nomura although no launch date has been set.
“We are pleased to launch these co-branded strategy indices with S&P Dow Jones Indices, a firm with along history and extensive experience across a wide variety of financial market indices,” said Yoshiteru Yamagishi, head of the bond indices section in the fixed income research department at Nomura Securities.
“The new indices offer the full benefits of Nomura-BPI, a benchmark that tracks trends in Japan’s bond markets, not only for Japanese but also for global investors,” he said.
Financial markets in Japan have swelled in recent months as the government signalled a shift in economic policy. Earlier this month the Bank of Japan declared it would pursue an aggressive quantitative easing strategy to double the monetary base of the country within two years through open-ended asset purchases.
The Bank said it aimed to extend the country’s monetary base to ¥270 trillion (US$2.8 trillion) from the current figure of ¥135 trillion (US$1.4 trillion), alongside a government stimulus plan totalling US$107 billion.