PRESS RELEASE

The shareholders’ meeting of Borsa Italiana held on 29 April 2005 and subsequently the Consob, under resolution No. 15101 dated 5 July 2005, approved several amendments to the Rules of the Markets and of the Nuovo Mercato and the accompanying Instructions.

Specifically, with regards to the following:

• the integration of the Nuovo Mercato Rules into the Rules of the Markets, together with the accompanying Instructions;

• the re-naming of the Nuovo Mercato as the MTAX market and of the TAHnm market as the TAHX market;

• the re-segmentation of the MTAX;

• the change in minimum capitalization of MTA and MTAX;

the enforcement date is set for 19 September 2005.

In order to grant a gradual changeover to the new rules, some transitional provisions have been introduced. Such provisions state that:

1. the companies already belonging to the STAR segment of the MTA market and to the techSTAR sector of the Nuovo Mercato (now MTAX), respectively, will remain or become part of the STAR segment. They will be obliged to comply with the additional requirements provided for within the shareholders’ meeting called to approve the financial statements for 2005;

2. the issuers on the MTAX market, not belonging to the techSTAR sector, will be assigned to the Blue Chip and Standard segments of the MTAX market on 19 September 2005. The securities belonging to the Standard segment of the MTAX market will continue to be traded according to the trading hours currently applicable, until the first ordinary revision of the S&P/MIB index for 2006;

3. the financial instruments of the TAHX market already belonging to the techSTAR sector (now Star segment of the MTAX), may continue to be traded on the TAHX market after 19 September 2005, unless the specialist requires otherwise. The financial instruments of issuers which on 19 September 2005 will be assigned to the Standard segment of the MTAX market, may continue to be traded on the TAHX market until the first ordinary revision of the S&P/MIB index for 2006.

On 20 July 2005, the Board of Directors of Borsa Italiana approved other amendments to the Instructions accompanying the Rules of the Markets, in line with the re-organization of the markets and aiming at making the disclosure indexes more representative.

a) In order to create an index which is complementary to the S&P/MIB index and representative of all the shares belonging to the Blue Chip segment (and not already included in the S&P/MIB index), the calculation method of the MIDEX index will be amended in such a way so that it "refers to all the shares listed in the Blue Chip segment of the stock exchange and of the MTAX market not included in the S&P/MIB index".

In detail, this index will base itself on a free-float weighting method and the weight of each share at the time of the updates shall not exceed 10% of the entire basket.

The index will be calculated and disseminated from the continuous trading phase with a frequency of one minute on the basis of the prices of the last contracts concluded on each share.

b) In order to facilitate the adaptation of the SGRs-Società di Gestione del Risparmio (Managed Savings’ Companies) to the recent amendments of the Consob Regulation on Issuers - which establish, among other things, the obligation for the funds which involve returns capitalization to use benchmarks which anticipate the reinvestment of the dividends -, the S&P/MIB, MIBTEL, MIB-R, MIDEX, All Stars, STAR and techSTAR indexes will also be disseminated in the total return version once a day at the end of the trading session. These indexes provide that the dividends detached should be reinvested in the index itself: therefore, in coincidence with the coupon detachment dates, they will have a daily return greater than that of the corresponding price indexes, while during the sessions when coupon detachment does not take place, the returns will be identical.

Milan, Italy, 4 August 2005