Press

Eurex, the world's largest derivatives exchange, will expand its product portfolio to include Spanish and Swedish equity options from November 2006. On November 20, Eurex will introduce equity options on the Spanish stocks Banco Santander Central Hispano, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentina, Endesa, Iberdrola, Repsol and Telefonica. With these new equity options, Eurex will now offer equity options on 49 of the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50 equities, covering over 99 percent of the total market capitalization of the index. Additionally, Eurex will broaden its Scandinavian product range with two new equity options on Ericsson and Nordea, bringing the total to 11 Scandinavian equity options. Ericsson and Nordea are the two largest companies of the OMXS30 index.

Eurex is the leading exchange for trading in European equity options and offers options on approximately 180 stocks from 11 countries. A total of 154 million equity options were traded in the first half of 2006, an increase of 20 percent on the previous year. Equity options on components of the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50 have seen strong growth in trading volume, with volumes up approximately 22 percent.