All common shares in circulation listed on the Caracas Stock Exchange are eligible to be included in the Index if they meet the criteria contained in points 1 through 10:
The full capital share of a constituent stock must be included in the calculation of the market capitalization. When a company has one or more classes of shares, the secondary classes will be included in the Index only if they meet the norms contained in paragraphs 3 to 11, and if they represent at least 20% of the aggregate company capital. The market capitalization of the secondary classes included will be calculated utilizing the price of the class and not of the main share.
At least 25% of the shares in circulation must be publicly available for trade and must not be held by only one investor or group of investors with the same interests. It will be assumed that two or more stockholder of more than 75% of the shares in circulation have the same interests, unless proven to the contrary.
The shares must have been traded on at least 75% of all trading days during the last 12 months, or during the total number of trading days since the security became listed on the Exchange in the case of newly listed shares.
The amount of stock traded in regular operations during the last twelve months or during the period since it became traded, must be more than 0.5% of the total traded on the market. In order to assure that liquidity is not influenced by a reduced number of very big and punctual operations during the period, operations in amounts more than twice the standard deviation of the average during the period will not be taken into account.
Shares chosen to be part of the Index must represent more than 70% of their total market capitalization. Should it occur that this is not the case and it is considered that this situation is permanent, the Committee will study the possibility of changing the number of constituents in the Index in order assure that this criteria is met.
Only fully paid shares may form part of the number of shares in circulation for purposes of calculating the market capitalization.
Preferential convertible shares will be excluded until they become converted.
Funds whose value is derived directly from their portfolios will be excluded.
A Company, which is a fully owned subsidiary of another constituent, will be excluded from the list of eligible shares in order to prevent "double accounting". This rule will not apply when the company is the subsidiary of an international enterprise that is not traded in the local market.
The Committee will decide upon the adjustment to be made over the number of shares in circulation of a subsidiary of another constituent in order to avoid "double accounting". Furthermore, the Committee will decide upon the adjustment to be made to the number of shares in circulation according to the percentage of shares the State may keep in some of the Index constituents.
