Already responsible for calculation and distribution of the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global REIT Index Series, the FTSE Group expanded its role in the real estate investment market in March by adding responsibility for calculating and distributing NAREIT's domestic REIT indexes.

"Our objective is to not only produce the NAREIT indexes and publish them, but to get them more widely used," comments Jerry Moskowitz, FTSE's managing director for the Americas. There's a second objective as well. FTSE wants to help spur the creation of investable products such as ETFs or mutual funds benchmarked to the NAREIT indexes.

"Typically, when you do that you need to make sure that each one of the sub-indexes has a certain level of liquidity in terms of companies involved," Moskowitz says. "We have experience in negotiating and putting together packages for ETFs. We have the ability to customize indexes so if someone says to us, 'we want to create a fund and want office plus retail combined with history and calculated on a forward basis,' we can do it."

Indeed, FTSE is all about indexes. Owned since 1995 by The Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange, the London-based FTSE Group brands itself as "The Index Company." Basically, its raison d'etat is the creation and management of indexes and associated data services on an international scale.

FTSE now operates with 11 offices worldwide. At last count, it calculates indexes and serves clients in more than 77 countries, including the American Stock Exchange, Athens Stock Exchange, Bursa Malaysia, Bolsa de Madrid, Cyprus Stock Exchange, Johannesburg Securities Exchange, NASDAQ, Nomura Securities, Philippines Stock Exchange, and many others.

About $2.5 trillion in assets are under management using FTSE indexes.

FTSE does not give financial advice to clients. Rather, it believes it can offer objective and value-added market information. "We are not or cannot create funds from indexes," Moskowitz reiterates. "Frankly, we do not want to because we want to remain independent from the investment management business. We have to be separate from organizations that are in the business of managing funds from indexes."

Joint ventures with organizations such as NAREIT are part of FTSE's objective to open markets for international investment. "People perceive the NAREIT indexes as the basis for local (U.S.) investments, not something global," Moskowitz says, " but we will start changing those views."