While UBS has not sold the index itself or its intellectual property, it has transferred control and oversight of the 22-component index to Bloomberg, the FT reported citing Bloomberg Indexes' head Srikant Dash. He said Bloomberg had no plans to change the composition or methodology of the index.

Dash could not immediately be reached by phone.

The Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index competes with the S&P GSCI index for the lion's share of the institutional and retail investor funds that flow into raw material markets, with an estimated $80 billion benchmarked against it.

The FT said the move precedes a July deadline for key financial market index providers to tighten oversight following a series of scandals involving financial market benchmarks.

UBS is "very, very focused on the independence of the benchmark. Anything we can do to reassure clients of that, we will do," the FT quoted Edmund Carroll, global head of commodities at UBS, as saying.

Thomson Reuters competes with Bloomberg LP to sell financial news and data, including indexes.

(Reporting by Jonathan Leff; Editing by Bernard Orr)