Claymore Investments, Inc. has revealed that the Claymore CDN Dividend & Income Achievers exchange-traded fund (Symbol: CDZ) will commence tracking the S&P/TSX Canadian dividend aristocrats index effective July 9. Also, the ETF will be renamed as the Claymore S&P/TSX Canadian Dividend ETF and will continue to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the CDZ ticker symbol.

The index is designed to track Canadian companies evidencing both sustainable dividend income and capital appreciation potential which are both key factors in CDZ investors’ total return expectations.

In order for Standard & Poor’s Corp. to consider a company a “dividend aristocrat,” the company must satisfy the following criteria:

(i) its security is a common stock or income trust listed on the TSX and is a constituent of the S&P broad market index (the “BMI”);
(ii) (ii) the security has increased ordinary cash dividends every year for at least five consecutive years; and
(iii) (iii) the float-adjusted market capitalization of the security, at the time of the review, must be at least $300 million.

The index methodology incorporates concentration limits to prevent any stock from being more than 8% of the index weight, any income trust constituent from being more than 5% of the index weight and income trusts in aggregate from exceeding 30% of the index weight at each quarterly rebalancing.

The index is weighted by indicated annual dividend yield, with constituents being re-weighted every quarter. The dividend aristocrats constituent membership is reviewed every December. New members are added to the index on the close of the third Friday in December based on a review of the dividend payments of all constituents of the BMI.