June 10, 2009 (FinancialWire) — The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ) and the American Bankers Association introduced the NASDAQ OMX ABA Community Bank Index (NASDAQ: ABQI).

The index enables investors to track the performance of the most actively traded of the approximately 475 community banks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. The NASDAQ OMX ABA Community Bank Index is the latest index launched by the NASDAQ OMX Global Index Group and underscores its commitment to designing and calculating relevant world-class indexes.

“The NASDAQ OMX ABA Community Bank Index is a great way for the investment community to track the price performance of the community banks,” said NASDAQ OMX executive vice president John Jacobs. “And with community banks’ growing importance in the daily financial lives of Americans, this Index will play an important role as a barometer of the companies’ performance.”

“This index is the next step in the evolution of the ABA NASDAQ Community Bank Index which was launched in December 2003,” said Diane Casey-Landry, ABA senior executive vice president and chief operating officer. “And it will be an important tool to track those community banks with greater market liquidity.”

The NASDAQ OMX ABA Community Bank Index is composed of all banks and thrifts or their holding companies listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market, excluding the 50 largest U.S. banks by asset size, any bank having an international specialization, and any bank having a credit-card specialization as screened by the ABA based on the most recent call report data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp..

In addition to the above standards applied by ABA, NASDAQ OMX applies quantitative screens to ensure each component has a market value greater than $200 million and a three-month average daily-dollar trading volume greater than $500,000.

The Index is calculated in real-time and began calculation with a value of 1,000.00 on June 8, 2009.

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