Russell Indexes Surpass $2 Trillion In Benchmarked Assets (Russell.com)

Russell Indexes Surpass $2 Trillion In Benchmarked Assets

Tacoma, WA — Nov. 22, 2004 — Russell Investment Group's family of 21 U.S. stock indexes has exceeded $2 trillion in benchmarked assets. Of the more than $2 trillion in assets now benchmarked against Russell's indexes, the breakdown is as follows: approximately $1.4 trillion is actively and passively managed institutional assets; $450 billion is passively managed assets, such as exchange traded funds and index mutual funds; and $474 billion is actively managed retail mutual funds.

The $2 trillion includes assets benchmarked against the broad-market Russell 3000® Index, the large-cap Russell 1000® Index and the small-cap Russell 2000® Index. The $1.4 trillion in institutional assets corresponds to a 43.1 percent share of total benchmarked institutional assets, up from 38.9 percent in 2003 and 28.1percent in 2002. In addition, Russell's style indexes remain the benchmark of choice for active portfolios, accounting for 97% of growth and value-oriented assets.

"The amount of assets benchmarked against Russell continues to grow at a rapid pace and this milestone reconfirms our position as the fastest growing family of indexes in the business," said Kelly Haughton, strategic director of Russell indexes. "We originally created our indexes as a tool to measure investment manager performance and we utilize an objective, transparent process in their development. We believe that the significant growth in the use of Russell indexes is a reflection of our continued commitment to providing investors with the most accurate picture of the U.S. equity market."

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Russell indexes. Russell employs its indexes to objectively evaluate investment managers for multi-manager funds and other investment services.

Editor's Note:
* The $1.4 trillion in institutional assets was determined by Russell's examination of 2,790 U.S. equity products with a reported benchmark in Nelson Information's MarketPlace Web database. The source of the $450 billion in passively managed indexed retail assets is according to a semi-annual survey conducted by Russell/Mellon and the $474 billion in actively managed mutual fund assets is from Morningstar's Datalab product. The first two figures include about $110 billion that is double counted in these two categories and has thus been subtracted from the total assets.

Russell Investment Group is a registered trade name of Frank Russell Company, a Washington, USA corporation, which operates through subsidiaries worldwide. Frank Russell Company is a subsidiary of The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Indexes and benchmarks are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly.

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