DAX 
The regular review of the most important German stock market indices revealed no changes in the league of the 40 largest German stocks, as announced by Deutsche Börse on Tuesday evening. This means that online fashion retailer Zalando, which was the first candidate for relegation, can narrowly maintain its place in the Dax. Lufthansa was kicked out of the Dax in 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, during which the airline had to be supported by the state.
In contrast, there are two newcomers in the MDax of the next 50 largest stocks: the biotech company Morphosys moves up shortly before the takeover by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, after the share price went through the roof as a result of the purchase offer. The industrial services provider Bilfinger returns to the MDax after six and a half years. The two replace automotive supplier Vitesco, whose free float has fallen to just over ten percent following Schaeffler's investment, and kitchen equipment supplier Rational.
The latter's market capitalization would still have easily sufficed for the small cap index. However, Rational has been dropped from the Dax indices altogether because the company from Landsberg am Lech no longer fulfills the rules for good corporate governance, which Deutsche Börse has made part of its Dax rules and regulations: The chairman of the audit committee on the supervisory board is no longer considered independent after more than twelve years as a member of the board. Krones was temporarily removed from the Dax indices last year for a similar reason.
Vitesco, on the other hand, is still listed in the small-cap index SDax. This is where the financial services provider MLP is moving up again after almost four years. It had even belonged to the Dax at the beginning of the 2000s.
The changes will take effect the Monday after next (March 18). From then on, a Dax stock, measured by index weight, may account for more than ten percent of the Dax following the recalculation of the index. The stock exchange had raised the cap to 15 percent from 10 percent in the fall. Only the software group SAP, whose index weighting had recently risen to more than twelve percent, is likely to be affected by this. Its Dax weighting will now no longer be trimmed to ten percent.
(Report by Alexander Hübner, edited by Birgit Mittwollen. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).
