SIS PLANS TO AUTOMATE CORPORATE ACTIONS BY END OF 2009

Posted July 21, 2008

ZURICH -- To comply with European standards for harmonization of entitlements, SIS SegaInterSettle plans to introduce a record date for corporate actions in the Swiss market, starting in November 2009, along with automation of data flow from companies to SIS at that time.

After implementation of the record date, positions entitled to dividends will no longer be determined on ex-date (the first day the shares are traded without dividends), but only three working days thereafter. This will also apply to all other corporate actions. As a result, so-called crossex compensations will be largely avoided, making complex and expensive corrections obsolete.

As of the end of 2009, SIS will no longer enter corporate actions data itself. The data will be entered by the companies or their paying agents via Internet and transmitted to SIS. This measure will allow SIS to largely eliminate the manual effort involved in entering entitlements. The Internet-based solution for entering such data is part of a larger project launched by Swiss Financial Market Services (SFMS), which aims to provide companies with a portal where all information on a security can be entered electronically and distributed to different receivers.