New trading hours

The Board of Directors of Borsa Italiana has approved changes to the trading hours, which will take effect on January 2^nd 2006. These changes enter into the process of aligning the trading hours of markets managed and organised by Borsa Italiana with European standards. The objectives of these changes include facilitating arbitrage trading of securities in the same sector but listed on different European markets.

More specifically, for the Blue Chip and STAR segments of the MTA and MTAX markets, and for the SeDex Market, there will be an increase of 5 minutes in the continuous trading phase, beginning at 9.05 instead of 9.10.

As far as the closing phase is concerned, a reduction of 5 minutes in the closing auction has been decided. Therefore, the deadline for entering auction orders will be 17.30 instead of 17.35. This will allow to anticipate the auction closing phase to 17.33, while the reference and official prices will be calculated and disseminated immediately after 17.35 (instead of 17.43 as today).

The hours of the IDEM derivatives market will remain unchanged with continuous trading from 9.00 to 17.40. The only change will consist in a reduction of 5 minutes in the trading phase on the maturity day for the nearest maturity of S&P/MIB index futures, S&P/MIB index mini-futures, and options on the S&P/MIB index and stock futures. This phase will be carried out between 9.00 and 9.05.

Moreover, there will be a reduction in the duration of the technical suspension in case of excessive price volatility on the MTA, MTAX and Expandi markets, from the current 25 minutes to 12 minutes. It follows that the interruption of continuous trading will have a total duration of 15 minutes (12 minutes pre-auction plus 3 minutes of validation) instead of the current 30 minutes (25 minutes of pre-auction and 5 of validation).

Milan, 6 ^th December 2005

See attached file for further informations (.pdf)