News Releases

Surprising returns from the cash equity markets

London (02 October 2008) – Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC, today announces the launch of its Q-BES Index Family, an alpha strategy that aims to perform robustly in bull, bear and flat markets.

The Q-BES Index family is based on the Barclays Q-BES™ (Quantitative Barclays Earnings Surprise) strategy, an innovative approach to long/short investing designed to take advantage of the market’s reaction to positive earnings surprises versus consensus estimates for U.S. or European companies.

The Barclays Capital Q-BES Indices reflect the performance of the Q-BES™ strategy when applied to different Initial Universes. The Initial Universe is always filtered based on market capitalisation and liquidity, and the remaining stocks are filtered based on fundamental metrics. Those with the largest earnings surprise are then selected to be included in the strategy basket, which forms the basis for the index values. The basket of stocks is rebalanced monthly to ensure that it reflects current market conditions.

“The Q-BES Strategy provides investors with a liquid and transparent investment strategy. It focuses on the behaviour of value stocks after they experience earnings surprises, extracting alpha from their positive momentum after such surprises,” commented Philipp Orgler, Director, Equity Derivatives Structuring at Barclays Capital.

The Q-BES strategy maintains a short position in a benchmark index seeking to make the strategy market neutral overall. The choice of the benchmark index, in particular, is an attractive complementary short due to investors' reliance on it for liquidity in times of stress.

Waqas Samad, Head of Index Products at Barclays Capital, added, “One of our main objectives at Barclays Capital is to extend the boundaries beyond benchmark indices. The Q-BES Index Family adds to Barclays Capital’s already broad range of index products spanning beta, enhanced beta and alpha strategies.”

Barclays Capital will provide data, analytics and support for the index via web-based and other e-commerce protocols. The indices are available on Barclays Capital’s index products website (http://www.barcap.com/indices/) and a subset of the index family via Bloomberg BCIX <go>.

About Barclays Capital
Barclays Capital is the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC. With a distinctive business model, Barclays Capital provides large corporate, government and institutional clients with a comprehensive set of solutions to their strategic advisory, financing and risk management needs.  Barclays Capital has offices around the world, employs over 20,000 people and has the global reach, advisory services and distribution power to meet the needs of issuers and investors worldwide.

For further information about Barclays Capital, please visit our website www.barclayscapital.com.
Barclays Capital - the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC. Registered in England 1026167. Registered office 1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5HP. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority and a member of the London Stock Exchange.

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