108 Million Contracts Traded On Eurex In February, Up 7 Percent On 2005 - Trading And Open Interest In French And Italian Equity Options Increases Sharply - Single Stock Futures Continue To Gain Market Share

Eurex, the world's largest derivatives exchange, reported on Wednesday that it traded a total of 108 million contracts in February, an increase of approximately 7 percent on February 2005. Approximately 5.4 million contracts per day were traded. Open interest at Eurex also continued to rise; at 107 million contracts at the end of February it was 39 percent higher than the same period in the previous year (February 2005: 77 million contracts).

The Fixed-Income Derivatives segment was once again the strongest performing segment on Eurex, with 56 million contracts traded. Approximately 25 million contracts were traded in the Euro-Bund-Future. Trading volume in the 2 year Euro-Schatz Future was up 14 percent year on year and with 13 million contracts traded. The Euro-Bobl future contract also traded 13 million contracts. Open interest in all three benchmark contracts saw strong growth; open interest for the Euro-Bund future was up 17 percent, the Euro-Bobl future up 59 percent and the Euro-Schatz future up 65 percent.

Equity derivatives also showed strong growth in February, with volumes up 22 percent year-on-year to 51 million contracts (February 2005: 42 million contracts). Of these, 30 million were attributable to equity index derivatives and approximately 21 million to equity options. Eurex also saw strong growth in French and Italian equity options – French options were up 57 percent year-on-year to approximately 603,000 contracts and Italian options increased 88 percent to 114,000 contracts. Open interest growth in these contracts was even higher – an increase of 137 percent for French options and 196 percent for Italian options.

In the first three months since the introduction of Eurex’s Flex Options facility, the number of contracts traded has also seen strong growth. A total of 158,000 contracts have been traded; with 88,000 in February alone. The Flex options facility is an OTC trading facility that enables market participants to determine the key parameters to suit their individual requirements in all equity and equity index products. This includes setting the exercise price, the expiration date and the exercise style of standardized options series.

Trading in single stock futures at Eurex also continued to grow. Since its introduction in October 2005, over 518,000 contracts have been traded. In February, approximately 153,000 contracts were traded and Eurex’s market share compared to its largest competitor now stands at 29.5 percent.

The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurex’s fixed-income product range, recorded a volume of 12 billion euros (single counting) in February, an increase of 24 percent year-on-year and one percent on the previous month. Trading in German government bonds rose approximately 16 percent in February to 10.2 billion euros (January 8.8 billion euros).