Owens-Illinois Inc. headed back to S&P 500 stock index

12/25/2008

Owens-Illinois Inc., a Perrysburg glass-container maker, will be making a command reappearance when it is added to the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index next week.

S&P announced yesterday that the suburban Toledo firm, which also is a Fortune 500 company, would rejoin the index, replacing Wachovia Corp., a West Coast bank that is being acquired by Wells Fargo & Co.

The index, which consists of 500 firms in diverse lines of business, is considered a key stock measure by investors nationwide. Many pension funds, mutual funds, and institutional investors use the index as a basis for their stock investments. No Toledo area firms are currently in the index.

O-I, which will join the index after trading closes Dec. 31, was one of the original S&P 500 when the index began on March 4, 1957. The firm has the rare distinction of being kicked off twice - in 1987 when it was taken over by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and in 2000, nine years after it went public again, when its stock hit a low of $2.50 a share.

Over the years, other Toledo-area firms have held positions on the S&P 500. They include what was then Manor Care Inc., which was removed last year as the company went private; Owens Corning, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., and what is now Dana Holding Corp.

S&P also said that Libbey Inc., a Toledo firm that makes glasses and other tableware, will be removed from its lesser-known SmallCap 600 index of smaller companies. Libbey will be replaced after Dec. 31 by Independent Bank Corp.