Press

Eurex, the international derivatives market, is steadily expanding its position as the world's lead-ing equity options exchange with increasing market share in the trading of Dutch and French equity options. During the trading week from April 22 to 25, Eurex achieved new record vol-umes on a daily and weekly basis. The derivatives market turned over some 145,000 Dutch and 29,000 French equity options in trading last week. Compared to the average weekly volume in 2003, this corresponds to growth of 57 and 68 percent, respectively. On April 23, the derivatives market also posted record turnover in Dutch equity options with 55,000 contracts traded (the previous record in daily volume was set on 28 Jan 2003 with 53,500 contracts traded). This gave Eurex a market share of some 19 percent in worldwide trading of Dutch equity options. On a daily average, Eurex achieved market share of about 13.5 percent in its record trading week.

During the first quarter of 2003, Eurex turned over more than 1.4 million contracts, about five times as many as in the first quarter of 2002. In April 2003 to date, 460,000 contracts have been traded and cleared on the Eurex platform, another increase in volume over the previous months even before month-end. In the French equity option segment, Eurex has also gained consider-able market share, which in terms of the nominal value of the options traded (the nominal value of the transactions) since the start of the Eurex market initiative for French equity options in early March, has amounted to an average of six percent of the total market in worldwide trading of these products, and as much as 14.5 percent in the previous trading week.