State Street – BOSTON – State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), the asset management business of State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT), announced recent updates to the composition of the SSGA Gender Diversity Index (Index).

The Index, which was first launched in March 2016, tracks US exchange-listed large capitalization companies with the highest levels of gender diversity within their sectors on their boards of directors and in their senior leadership.

The top ten companies added to the Index as a result of the annual rebalance, effective after the close of trading on July 15, 2016, according to Index weighting, include Pfizer Inc., PepsiCo, 3M, Mastercard, Starbucks, DuPont, Biogen, Salesforce, Target, and The Kroger Co.

“We applaud the new additions for their efforts in confronting the gender diversity challenge by hiring and retaining women in senior leadership,” said Ronald O’Hanley, president and chief executive officer of State Street Global Advisors. “As an organization, we are deeply committed to helping to close the gender gap in the workplace, but cannot achieve this goal on our own. We need to work together to strengthen gender diversity and inclusion practices across corporate America.”

The SSGA Gender Diversity Index is rebalanced on an annual basis to ensure that the selection of the constituents continues to reflect the underlying Index objective: tracking the performance of US large-capitalization companies that are leaders within their sectors in advancing women through gender diversity on their boards of directors and in senior leadership positions. Pursuant to the rules-based Index methodology, SSGA conducted a comprehensive review of the companies listed in the Index and added 88 new corporations that have made their mark in achieving the highest levels of senior leadership gender diversity within their sectors.

“Companies in the Index have demonstrated a track record of employing women in their senior management ranks,” said Jennifer Bender, director of research for the global equity beta solutions group. “By focusing on US companies that have the highest percentages of women in senior leadership positions relative to their sector peers, we designed this Index as an effort to reflect companies that are committed to gender diversity.”

According to a 2015 MSCI The methodology used in MSCI’s study is different than that of the Index, and as such, the results of the study should not be viewed as indicative of the future performance of the Index.

study that explored global trends in gender diversity on corporate boards between December 2009 and August 2015, companies with at least three female board members, or companies with a higher percentage of women on the board than its country’s average, performed better as measured by return on equity (10.1% per year versus 7.4% for all other companies). Return on equity is not representative of the performance of any investment or the potential return of Index. Despite these findings, American women account for an average of just 16 percent of the members of executive teams. Lee, Linda-Eling , et al. Women on Boards: Global Trends in Gender Diversity on Corporate Boards, MSCI, November 2015. Accessed on February 17th, 2016 at: https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/04b6f646-d638-4878-9c61-4eb91748a82b

In March 2016, SSGA introduced the SPDR® SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF (the “Fund”) (Ticker: SHE), which is designed to track the performance of the SSGA Gender Diversity Index. The Fund is distributed by State Street Global Markets, LLC.

About State Street Global Advisors

For nearly four decades, State Street Global Advisors has been committed to helping our clients, and those who rely on them, achieve financial security. We partner with many of the world’s largest, most sophisticated investors and financial intermediaries to help them reach their goals through a rigorous, research-driven investment process spanning both indexing and active disciplines. With trillions* in assets under management, our scale and global reach offer clients access to markets, geographies and asset classes, and allow us to deliver thoughtful insights and innovative solutions.

State Street Global Advisors is the investment management arm of State Street Corporation.