DEUTSCHE BÖRSE TO DECREASE FEES FOR XETRA ALGORITHMIC TRADING

Posted August 26, 2008

FRANKFURT – The Deutsche Börse plans to change its pricing for algorithmic trading on its Xetra electronic trading platform starting in September.

Deutsche Börse will remove its minimum €0.60 fee for executing orders in the Xetra Automated Trading Program (ATP). Instead, the exchange will base transaction fees on the value of executed orders, even for small ATP orders with a value of less than €12,500. This would reduce the transaction fee for an executed ATP order with a value of €6,250 by 50 percent.

Xetra will increase its number of discount levels from seven to eight, increasing discount rates per each level from 7 to 7.5 percent, therefore increasing the maximum discount rate on Xetra transaction fees from 49 to 60 percent.

Under the new Xetra pricing model, ATP customers would benefit from a fee reduction of €10 million per year on the basis of the volume figures of the first half of 2008. Deutsche Börse projects that ATP trading volume will rise further due to the price sensitivity of algorithmic orders that are often sliced into smaller sections; a correspondingly large compensation of the price effects on turnover is expected.