Press

Clearstream International, Europe's premier clearing and settlement organisation offering a comprehensive service for equities and bonds both domestic and cross-border, announced today that it has implemented improved cross border settlement procedures between domestic and international markets in German securities.

The new service, offered by Clearstream Banking Luxembourg, now provides an efficient gateway for the international investment community to settle domestic transactions free and against payment through Clearstream's German domestic realtime settlement processing system (RTS). The new service streamlines the processes between Clearstream's ICSD platform (Creation) and its German Domestic CSD platform (CASCADE). This new service is now delivering significant benefits to both Clearstream Banking's international and domestic customers. These benefits include:

1. Improved collateral management opportunities and additional possibilities to resolve fails
2. Additional same day back-to-back settlement opportunities
3. Enhanced input deadline for settlement instructions from 11:30 a.m. to 03:00 p.m. for both Free of Payment and Against Payment transactions
4. Increased opportunities for customers to settle same day transactions, including same day Repo transaction resulting from trading activity on the Eurex Repo platform

Commenting on the launch of the new service, Matthias Ganz, Managing Director Operations and German Customers, said:

"With the successful launch of the cross-border RTS service, we are able to provide the inter-national community with a more efficient access to the German domestic market. This is in line with our vision of a unified process for our customer base. The new service also helps to integrate Clearstream's international and domestic offerings with the product base the Deutsche Börse Group by offering enhanced access to Eurex Repo and Eurex Bonds. It also provides a clear example of the benefits we are now delivering through the integrated services of the Group. "

The new service was implemented on Monday, 26 August 2002.

For further information, please contact:

Yolande Theis
Clearstream International
ytheis.ci@clearstream.com
Tel: +352 4511 05 320
Fax: +352 45 11 09 5320