SCOACH TRADES PRODUCTS ON NEW VERSION OF XETRA PLATFORM

Posted April 28, 2008

FRANKFURT – European certificates and warrants exchange Scoach, a joint venture between the SFMS (the former SWX Group) and Deutsche Börse AG, is now trading about 300,000 products on a new version of fully electronic trading platform Xetra. Consequently, more than 260 banks and brokerage firms have gained direct access to a broad range of structured products that had been traded on the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

“The new Xetra version is a major step into the electronic stock exchange future in terms of both functionality and technology,” says Frank Gerstenschläger, Executive Board member responsible for the cash market at Deutsche Börse and member of the Supervisory Board of Scoach. “It allows the bundling of liquidity for securities from all asset classes on a highly efficient platform, thus offering investors throughout Europe super-fast execution at the best possible prices.”

The new version of Xetra uses two new market models designed to further optimize liquidity in securities trading: first, a model allowing certificate and warrant issuers to directly quote bid and ask prices for their own products on an ongoing basis. Secondly, a model that subjects liquidity providers known as “specialists” to the obligation to execute orders based on the issuer quote. Both models will allow private investors across Europe to benefit from the fastest order execution and lowest transaction costs in fully electronic trading. Investors that want to place orders with Scoach will continue to select “Frankfurt” as the stock exchange in the order mask as usual.

In other developments, Xetra now uses high-performance processors, making the system faster and safer for all trading participants, as well as for special trading models such as algorithmic trading. Also, Xetra has increased capacity to allow trading in several hundred thousand different securities.