French aerospace and defence group Safran is to join France's CAC-40 index of blue chip stocks and French bank Natixis is to exit as of September 19, stock market operator Euronext said on Friday. Safran shares have surged 46 percent over the past 12 months, boosting the company's market capitalisation to 11.5 billion euros ($16.4 billion), above that of almost half the blue chip index's members.
Traders and analysts this week expected Safran to join but thought it would be the waste and water management group Suez Environment which would exit and not Natixis. Safran's stock has risen 21 percent in the past two weeks. Shares in Natixis have lost 41.4 percent since the bank joined the CAC 40 last year and they are down 17.6 percent since the beginning of the year. The two official criteria for index inclusion are the free-float adjusted market cap and a stock's trading volume. Shares in the CAC 40 attract investment funds which play index tracking strategies such as exchanged-traded funds.
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