EUROCCP TO CLEAR TRADES FOR SPANISH MARKET

Posted February 24, 2009

LONDON – European Central Counterparty Limited (EuroCCP) announced that it will begin clearing trades in the Spanish market this week.

Most of the trades cleared by EuroCCP are expected to come from the Turquoise platform. EuroCCP will also clear and settle trades in Spain for SmartPool, a new exchange-led, European dark pool for block trading established by the NYSE Euronext, HSBC, BNP Paribas and JPMorgan.

One hundred of the most commonly traded equity issues from Spain are eligible to be cleared through EuroCCP. EuroCCP now clears for 15 national markets in Europe and plans to continue to expand into additional European markets throughout 2009.

“Spain represents the latest market to be added by EuroCCP following our initial launch of 14 countries in 2008,” says Diana Chan, CEO of EuroCCP. “Our objective now is to continue to expand the platforms and markets we support so all our participants can benefit from the reduced costs provided by our business model.”

With this latest expansion, EuroCCP now clears and settles trades in: Austria, Belgium, France, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain. Settlement can be done in seven currencies: the euro, British pound, US dollar, Swiss franc, Danish krone, Swedish krona, and Norwegian krone.

The average daily volume of transactions rose to close to 400,000 transaction sides in January 2009, Chan said, as a result of growing volumes of trades being executed on the Turquoise platform.