Mumbai, June 14: With bank scrips getting into the limelight, the stock exchange, Mumbai (BSE) has decided to launch a new index, bankex, consisting 12 stocks including SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Bank of Baroda from Monday. Since bank stocks are emerging as a major segment in the equity market, the bourse has designed an index, computed on free float methodology, with base date as on January one, 2002, BSE said in a release here today.

The index would consist of 12 stocks, which represent 90 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all bank shares listed on the exchange, the release said.
Between January 01, 2002 and June 13, 2003, the total market capitalisation of bankex stocks more than doubled from Rs 22,970 crore to Rs 55,283 crore, it said. Bureau Report