Expansion of the benchmark index for the Government Petroleum Fund’s

1. Introduction

FTSE is a British company that constructs the equity benchmark indices currently used by the Government Petroleum Fund. Norges Bank’s submission dated 6 February 2003 concerning new emerging equity and bond markets refers to FTSE’s intention to introduce a new global equity index in September 2003. The existing indices, the FTSE World and FTSE All-World, will be continued, but will be replaced by the new index as FTSE’s main product. This submission presents an assessment of whether the Government Petroleum Fund should use the new FTSE Global Equity Index Series (GEIS) as a basis for the Fund’s benchmark index. In the new index, coverage will be further expanded as regards total market capitalisation and it will be possible to divide the index into large, medium-sized and small companies, as illustrated in Chart 1.

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