Dow Jones Shake-Up Drops Bank of America, HP

Biggest changes of stock index in a decade

Alcoa Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Bank of America Corp. will be dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average next week, in the biggest shake-up of the 30-stock index in almost a decade.

Alcoa, a Dow component for 54 years, will be replaced by athletic gear maker Nike Inc. Payments company Visa Inc. will replace H-P, which joined the index in 1997, and securities firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will supplant Bank of America, which spent five years in the blue-chip benchmark.

For the new entrants, "it would be very hard to argue that these are three companies not worthy of inclusion," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at New York brokerage BTIG LLC. "It's a positive development in the sense that you're trying to make the index better with each passing day."