KARACHI, Aug 31: Commencing Thursday, September 1st, 2005, the Abamco 30 Index, Pakistan’s first free float market capitalization based Index, will be going live and will be accessible through the Abamco Website (www.abamco.com/a30).

A press release issued by the company on Wednesday stated that ABAMCO 30 was the first index of its kind in Pakistan which had been especially engineered to measure market performance from a rational investment perspective.

The company stated that given the fact that holding structures in Pakistan were significantly different from the western world due to intricate group holdings, large government holdings and significant long term holdings by individuals, the market representation had to be trimmed to remove certain distortions.

Such distortions were eliminated by the Abamco 30 Index, which represented only the investable portion of the stock market, which was calibrated further to include stocks of financially sound entities with realistic liquidity values and fair prospects of future growth.

Abamco Limited press release noted that the company was the asset management arm of the J S Group and is a joint venture with International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group and AMVESCAP plc., the largest European fund management company with over $360 billion in assets under management.

Abamco Limited currently manages investments in excess of Rs16.5 billion on behalf of hundreds of institutions and thousands of individuals through nine mutual funds, the company press release stated.