Press

Eurex, the international derivatives market, closed out 2006 with record turnover of more than 1.526 billion contracts (2005: 1.25 billion contracts), and thus remains the largest derivatives exchange in the world. Eurex grew by approximately 22 percent year-on-year in 2006. 105 million contracts were traded in December 2006, up by 22.5 percent on December 2005, when the number of contracts traded totaled 86 million. In 2006, an average of 6 million contracts were traded on Eurex every day.

Equity-based derivatives recorded the highest turnover among all product segments in December with 56.3 million traded contracts, 40.4 million of which related to equity index derivatives and 15.9 million to equity derivatives (options and single stock futures). A total of 487 million equity index derivative contracts and 308 million equity derivative contracts were traded in 2006. The top equity index derivative was the future on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index with 18.5 million contracts, a 53 percent increase as against December 2005.

A total of 49.3 million contracts were traded in the fixed-income derivatives segment in December. This included 20.9 million contracts on the Euro-Bund Future, the strongest Eurex product, 11.3 million contracts on the Euro-Bobl Future and 12.4 million contracts contributed by the Euro-Schatz Future, which grew by 22 percent year-on-year. 731.2 million fixed-income derivatives contracts were traded in 2006, around 320 million of which related solely to the Euro-Bund Future.