BRIC Index

Dow Jones Indexes develops, maintains and licenses market indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products.

As BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have gained huge investor attention with their potential for long term growth, Dow Jones has a BRIC 50 Index. BRIC 50 Index has 5 stocks for Russia and 15 each for Brazil, India and China.


15 stocks from India as part of BRIC 50 index are (in the order of weightage as of today).

Reliance Industries Ltd.
Infosys Technologies Ltd.
ICICI Bank Ltd.
Housing Development Finance Corp. Ltd.
ITC Ltd.
Larsen & Toubro Ltd.
Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd.
Hindustan Lever Ltd.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
Suzlon Energy Ltd.
Tata Steel Ltd.
State Bank of India
Tata Motors Ltd.
Hindalco Industries Ltd.

Do you have any of these stocks in your portfolio?

Corporate Governance (U.S & India)

A News excerpt: Bernard J. Ebbers, the former chairman of WorldCom, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating a record $11 billion fraud that toppled the telecommunications company he founded.

25 years imprisonment for a 64 years old may seem a little too much. But considering the magnitude of the fraud and considering the responsible position Ebbers held while he was cheating, this verdict is justifiable.

U.S is very strict on Corporate frauds and the punishment is real heavy. This is to demotivate (rather, threaten?) the other Corporates from involving in frauds and cheating the poor investors.

In addition to heavy punishments, U.S lawmakers have come up with a strict law called Sarbanes-Oxley Act, SOX shortly. This law is said to be "the most far-reaching change in American securities laws since depression". (I will write about SOX and Great Depression separately). With this law in place, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of U.S will have a closer look at the corporates and tight control on the corporates from cheating the investors and SEC.

Worldcom & Enron are hard lessons for SEC. Hopefully, the Corporate frauds will be eliminated or reduced with this law in practice.

While talking about these frauds, I couldn't resist thinking about 'the Big Bull' of India. I googled and found that Harshad Mehta (the Big Bull) is long dead. He died of heart attack on 31-Dec-2001. He was 47 when died. He used the Indian stock market during 1991-92 as his play ground and played hard ball on millions of poor investors' money. Sensex reached (or crossed) new highs during this period. SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) woke up and arrested him in April 1992. Unfortunately, almost 28 cases registered against him were still in trial stage at the time of his death. I am not sure whether the cases have come to an end now. Couldn't find it in net.

While B.Ebbers case took just 3 years for verdict in U.S, the biggest fraud case in Indian Stock Market history is (was) open without judgement for more than a decade.
If this is the case, how would the other market frauds like Harshad Mehta will get scared?
Like SOX, does SEBI have anything real tight on Indian public companies for Corporate Governance? Or are we going to learn a hard lesson like U.S?
Recent rallies in SENSEX (crossed 7340 already) of Indian Market is scary. Are the companies really performing good or there is someone like 'Big Bull' is making it go up?
Is SEBI keeping an eye on the corporates showing great results?

Is our money safe?