RIL, Wipro figure in S&P's Shariah Index

Five Indian companies, including Reliance Industries, Infosys Technologies and Wipro, figure in the Standard & Poor's BRIC Shariah Index, launched yesterday.

The S&P BRIC Shariah Index is designed to capture the largest and mostly liquid stocks in Brazil, Russia, India and China that meet the criteria of Shariah-law and are currently traded on developed market exchanges - specifically, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and NYSE.

But, India has the least representation in the index. Russia, which has 10 companies on the index, has the top representation, followed by China (9 companies) and Brazil (6 companies).

The other Indian companies in the Islamic Index are Tata Motors and Satyam Computer Services.

This is the first Shariah Index by S&P for BRIC nations though it has Shariah-compliant versions for its widely used global indices, the S&P 500, the S&P Europe 350 and the S&P Japan 500, as well as the S&P GCC Middle East Shariah Index series.

To be eligible for inclusion in the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, companies must first be constituents of the S&PFCI Index for Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Constituents are then screened for Shariah compliance based on proprietary sectoral and financial ratios. Only those stocks deemed Shariah-compliant are retained for the final S&P BRIC Shariah Index.