CEERIUS - CEE Responsible Investment Universe

The sustainability index CEERIUS (CEE Responsible Investment Universe) is a capitalization-weighted price index which is composed of the leading companies in reference to social and ecological quality that are traded on stock exchanges in the region of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Mag. Friesenbichler Unternehmensberatung is responsible for the sustainability research, daily calculation and dissemination is done by Wiener Börse AG. The index is calculated and disseminated on a real-time basis in EUR. It is designed as a tradable index and can be used as underlying for structured products and standardized derivatives (futures & options).

• CEERIUS is calculated Monday to Friday on each day on which at least one of the following local stock exchanges is open for trading: Bucharest SE, Budapest SE, Ljubljana SE, Prague SE, Warsaw SE or Zagreb SE. The local holidays will only be considered, if at least one stock of the respective market is contained in the CEERIUS.
• The weighting of the individual shares is based on their free float market capitalization adjusted by the smoothing factor SF.
• The SF increases the weighting of low capitalized shares and reduces the weighting of high capitalized shares. Thereby the impact of company size to the index composition should be reduced and at the same time feasibility to invest should be ensured.
• The effective free float of a company is tracked by free float factors: 0.10 – 0.25 – 0.50 – 0.75 – 1.00.
• The base universe is defined by the end of September and includes the stocks of the CECE Extended index and the CECE Mid Cap index.
• Basically the companies of the universe should not fall below a market capitalization of 100 mln Euro. Taking into account the actual market situation and the specifics of the local financial markets, the capitalization can be less than 100 mln Euro in the exceptional case.
• Quarterly review and adjustment of the calculation parameters.
• Annual sustainability evaluation and classification of the companies according to 9 rating categories (A+ to C-). All companies rated A+, A and A- will be included in the CEERIUS. Additionally companies with a rating of B+ can be included in the index to cover the best third of each sector.
• The stock selection takes place in December and is basically valid for one year.