The announcement came days after the Tokyo Stock Exchange said it would list equivalent contracts on July 26.

Chew Sutat, head of market development at SGX, said: “The SGX Nikkei Dividend Index futures will complement our existing suite of Nikkei-based products and meet investor demand for exchange-listed derivatives to hedge and manage dividend exposure.”

An SGX spokesperson said institutional market participants had requested the contracts for hedging and managing their dividend exposure. The exchange believes trading volumes in its Nikkei-related derivatives demonstrate a need for a hedging tool.

“Nikkei-based products have been among the most actively traded of contracts on SGX and we believe this new dividend future will complement our current suite of Nikkei products,” the SGX spokesperson said.

But a Tokyo-based official at a futures commission merchant said it was unlikely both contracts would be highly liquid and that inevitably traders would prefer the contract with more liquidity.

The underlying indices for the futures will be the Nikkei Stock Average Dividend Point Index, the Topix Dividend Index and the Topix Core 30 Dividend Index. The TSE will begin calculating and publishing its Topix and Topix Core 30 dividend indices in June.

The new index is calculated by substituting each actual dividend per share into the formula of the Nikkei average, in place of the share prices, and accumulating the value since the beginning of the year.