Family of regional real estate indices developed by Thomson Reuters, Global Property Research and Asia Pacific Real Estate Association

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, Global Property Research (GPR), a real estate index specialist, and Asia Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA), which represents and promotes the real estate asset class in the Asia Pacific region, today announced the launch of the Asia Pacific Real Estate Composite Indices – designed specifically to be the most comprehensive listed real estate benchmark available for the Asia Pacific region.

The Thomson Reuters/GPR/APREA Composite Index family has been developed with leading investors in Asia Pacific real estate and is differentiated by its value proposition:

1. It strikes a different balance between “income” and “growth” companies, recognizing the importance of developers in the Asian market and the need for growth companies to be taken into account;

2. It covers a broader set of countries than available elsewhere, 13* in total;

3. It includes Asian REITs reflecting their growing importance as they outperform both local Asian stock markets and property in the western world;

4. It includes high growth as well as the typical high dividend yielding companies associated with real estate.

The TR/GPR/APREA Composite Index family represents the first indices to be developed by Thomson Reuters, GPR and APREA. The launch of the TR/GPR/APREA Composite Index family supports Thomson Reuters vision to connect and enable the global financial community and represents a significant step forward in addressing the benchmarking needs of the investment community. It also supports APREA’s vision to give Asian real estate more visibility through indices and give appropriate recognition to the significant position that Asia now occupies in global institutional investment.

The new family of real estate indices is based on the total return of Asia Pacific property stocks, weighted by free-float market capitalization, in a way that represents the return characteristics of the overall Asia Pacific property stock sector.

“With real estate equity returns outperforming conventional equities in Asia Pacific, the sector is enjoying a revival and increased investment,” said Lucas Garland, head of indices product management at Thomson Reuters. “We are thrilled to extend our real estate collaboration to include the regional industry body, ensuring that together we are able to provide indices which truly reflect the Asia Pacific property landscape and are ideal to provide global and local investors with liquid access to the asset class.”

“As a listed real estate index specialist, GPR has been offering benchmarking solutions for many years,” said Jeroen Vreeker, head of GPR. “We have used our knowledge and insights into the Asia Pacific region to fulfil the wishes and needs of investors in this region. We are proud to present this innovative index, which serves as the best representation of the local property market.”

“The TR/GPR APREA Composite Index family meets an essential need as a benchmark and portfolio management tool truly representative of Asia Pacific listed real estate, and it is being introduced at a very important time with Asian investors in particular expected to expand their exposure to property and non-Asian investors expected to increase their exposure to Asian real estate,” said Lim Swe Guan, Chairman of APREA. “We are delighted to have joined Thomson Reuters and GPR in this major industry initiative.”

Thomson Reuters, Global Property Research and APREA are working together to develop listed real estate indices for Asia Pacific. The new indices will combine APREA’s regional knowledge and oversight as the key collective industry body in Asia Pacific real estate, with Thomson Reuters’ deep experience as calculator of some of the world’s most popular indices and GPR’s specialized expertise in real estate research and indexing.

Thomson Reuters today provides over 10,000 indices that allow market professionals to make better investment decisions and understand market trends. Thomson Reuters equity indices cover 51 countries and 27 regions and utilize the unique Thomson Reuters Business Classification system. Additionally we offer Sovereign Bond Indices for 28 markets and indices for a variety of other asset classes – such as the recently launched TR/GPR Real Estate Indices, Venture Capital Indices and Shariah compliant Indices for Islamic Finance.

Thomson Reuters provides innovative indices and index-related services to the global financial community to help investors make better decisions. Thomson Reuters index clients and partners rely upon the unparalleled breadth, depth, global network and vast data and content sets that only Thomson Reuters can provide. Backed by the content, data, independence and global information network of Thomson Reuters, our indices and index services are designed to suit any need.

*Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand.