UK-based F&C Asset Management has called for a UK-specific stock market index, to complement the current FTSE All-Share index and to help fu...

UK-based F&C Asset Management has called for a UK-specific stock market index, to complement the current FTSE All-Share index and to help fund managers who are trying to a invest only in British companies. According to F&C, major companies such as BP and Shell, which alone represent almost 13 per cent of the index by value, dominate the FTSE All-Share Index of 679 companies and are so international they should be grouped with rivals such as Exxon and other oil majors listed on other exchanges. The top 20 UK-listed companies are now so large that they represent 52 per cent of the market. And the top 10 listed companies are exclusively in the banking, oil, telecoms and pharmaceuticals sectors, which generate the bulk of their revenue from outside the UK. Indices are becoming "increasingly divorced from the economies with which they are nominally associated, and the investment mandates that are based on them being defined around increasingly outmoded measures," according to F&C. FTSE International is currently reviewing the nationality component of its indices following a spate of companies from emerging markets to list in London.