020611 stock futures

Starting July 22nd Borsa Italiana's Idem Market will launch trading on Stock Futures on individual shares of Borsa and Nuovo Mercato.

Trading will start with: Enel, Eni, Telecom Italia, Tim and Unicredito.

These stocks have been selected to represent a range of sectors and stocks with substantial underlying liquidity.

A Single Stock Future is a contract in which the buyer/seller is obliged to buy/sell a specific quantity of an underlying asset at a specific future date, at the price determined at the time of the transaction. The number of shares in the stock futures contracts will be the same as for IDEM's stock options contracts.

The notional value of a contract is calculated as the product of the price and the number of shares underlying the individual contract.

The contracts will be phisically settled. Settlement will be on the exercise date of the underlying securities at a settlement price which shall be the opening-auction price of the shares on the expiry date.

The contracts will trade on a monthly cycle for the near two months and then the nearest two months of the March, June, September and December cycle. The last trading day will be the third Friday of the expiration month.

Trading hours will be from 9.15am to 5.40pm as it is currently for all derivatives products.

Market liquidity will be enhanced by the presence of Market Makers who are required to display bids and offers on a continuous basis.

All transactions will be cleared and settled by Cassa di Compensazione e Garanzia, the Italian clearing house which is part of Borsa Italiana Group.

The introduction of Single Stock Futures extends the range of derivative products available on the IDEM market which includes FIB - Futures on the Mib30 index, futures on the Midex index, the miniFIB, the options on Mib30 index and stock options.

The launch of Single Stock Futures has been made possible following the recent introduction of the new trading platform which features OM Click technology designed specifically for the Derivatives Market of Borsa Italiana.

The platform, which became operational on April 22nd, has been developed by the Sweden's OM in collaboration with BIt Systems, the information technology subsidiary of Borsa Italiana.

This new trading platform facilitates access to the market. It offers faster connection via high speed lines to a system that is six times more powerful than the older version, improving the management of orders and quote flows.

Milan, 11 June 2002