2Sustain

Yesterday, the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) and the CRD Analytics announced the launch of the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index (Nasdaq:QCRD). This new index allows investors and other stakeholders to track the performance of
organizations that are emerging as leaders in sustainability
performance reporting because it includes companies that have voluntarily disclosed fundamental indicators, such as their carbon footprint, energy usage, water consumption, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, employee safety, workforce diversity, management composition and community investing.

"The NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index is a landmark in making sustainability more investable. The companies are force ranked based on a more holistic set of risk-adjusted performance metrics," says CRD Analytics' President, Michael Muyot. "Using a quant-based, Triple Bottom Line methodology allows companies to be compared on an apples-to-apples basis. This has helped elevate extra-financial analysis into mainstream investing."

Companies in the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index are required to:

• produce a publicly available corporate sustainability/responsibility report;

• disclose compatible sustainability data according to (GRI) G2/G3 guidelines;

• report at least 20% of total core environmental performance indicators;

• report at least 20% of the total core social performance  indicators;

• report at least 70% of the total financial performance indicators

The Index is calculated in real-time and began calculation with a value of 1,000.00 on June 15, 2009.

Like the Dow Jones sustainability indexes  that have been around since 1999, I anticipate that the new NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index will become a key reference point for sustainability performance.