Taipei, Sept. 8 (CNA) The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and the Korea Exchange (KRX) launched a cross-border IT index at the annual meeting of the World Federation of Exchanges in Bangkok Friday.

The Korea Taiwan IT Premier (ITP) is "the first step toward creating an index representing Asia," Chan Woo Jeong, chairman and CEO of KRX, stated in reference to the lack of a global index in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a press release issued by the TWSE.

On the appeal of the index, TWSE President Lee Chi-hsien noted that it "provides the solution to leveraging each other's (South Korea and Taiwan's) strengths to attract global capital investment in the two markets."

The index is a product-driven index that consists of the Premier IT stocks investors prefer and provides a risk hedge tool for investors, Chan said as he continued to stress the points of attraction of the index for global investors.

Only companies that have already issued single stock futures and have a free float adjusted market cap of over US$2.5 billion (meaning the portion of its shares that is traded in the stock market) have been selected for the index.

The resulting index is made up of 26 constituents, 17 of which are from Taiwan and nine from South Korea, and is worth US$582.4 billion, TWSE Vice President Chien Li-chung revealed.

The top six constituents of the Korea Taiwan ITP index are three Taiwanese companies -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Hon Hai Precision Industry and Largan Precision Company -- and three South Korean companies -- Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Naver Corp.

The index will be computed from the prices of these companies' stocks and will measure the value of the Taiwanese and South Korean IT markets, thereby giving global investors more opportunity to participate in the IT sectors of both countries.