031208 expressII

Monte Titoli, a Borsa Italiana Group company, today launched the first phase of the new net settlement service offered by the Express II platform.

The launch of Express II has involved the participation of around 350 intermediaries and affected approximately 5,350 non-convertible bonds issued by private issuers.

For the first time, a settlement cycle has been performed overnight and the settlement balances - securities and cash - have been settled at the start of the working day: the close interaction of Express II with Banca d'Italia's payment system, together with the introduction of various mechanisms for optimising the transactions being settled, such as securities lending and automatic collateralisation of securities, have enabled 99.07% of transactions to be settled during the overnight cycle, a percentage rising to 99.73% at the end of the daytime cycle, at which point only the remaining 0.27% have been submitted to Express II's gross settlement service. Thanks to the gross settlement functionalities of Express II, the percentage of settled transactions reached 99.96% at 1.50 a.m. of today.

"Express II, developed by SIA - Monte Titoli's technological supplier - is the fruit of the close collaboration between the Authorities, markets, central counterparties and dealers and has the dual aim of bringing Italian post-trading structures in line with international best practices and of meeting the demands of participants for a global financial market" stated Giovanni Sabatini, CEO of Monte Titoli. "Planning of the new functionalities of Express II is already underway, which aims to improve its interaction with the securities settlement systems and payment systems of other countries."

Starting from 26 January 2004, Express II will be extended to all other financial instruments, Government securities and shares in particular, and will spell a permanent end to the current settlement procedure "Liquidazione dei Titoli" managed by Banca d'Italia.

Milan, 8 December 2003