Business On French Derivatives Market More Than Doubled - Equity Derivatives Benefit From Record Trading On The Parisbourse SBF SA

A total of 183 070 821 contracts changed hands on derivative markets operated by ParisBourse SBF SA in 1999, 120,4 % more than the 89,438,514 traded in 1998. Out of this total, equity and index derivatives accounted for 173 746 764, interest-rate derivatives for 9 133 160 and commodity contracts for 190 897. Business showed healthy rises for all types of equity products, with CAC 40 futures and options as well as equity options confirming their top rankings in Europe. The sharpest rise was in equity options, with more than 68 millions contracts traded (68 011 428) more than 28,853,142 in 1998 , while premiums saw a rise of 73,3% on long term options and 23,8% on short term options from the previous year. Most actively traded options were in term of premium turnover : Carrefour, France Telecom, Axa, Vivendi and Alcatel. Eleven new categories of options began trading in 1999. Options were introduced on five additional stocks - Eridania Béghin Say, Crédit Lyonnais, Equant, Sidel and Rexel - and on October 1 monthly expirations were introduced for options on six major stocks from the Premier Marché. These are Axa, Alcatel, Carrefour, France Telecom, Totalfina and Vivendi. A total of 21 298 534 CAC 40 futures changed hands , 29,5% more than the 16,443,276 traded in 1998, setting the daily average at 82 234 Turning to CAC 40 options, 83 761 220 contracts were traded while premiums saw a rise of 9,7% from the previous year. Trading in futures on Dow Jones STOXX 50SM and Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50SM indices totaled 539 175 contracts, more than the 465,088 recorded in 1998. At December 30, open interest stood at 17,601 contracts, compared with 1,595 at December 31, 1998. Trading in interest-rate futures suffered a significant decline with 6,126,946 Euro Notional contracts changing hands in 1999 after 23,284,475 in 1998, a fall of 73,7 %. However, a rebound emerged in December when the daily average was up to 27,665 after 8,107 in November, thus returning to levels observed in the first quarter and in June 1999. Trading in the 3-month Euribor future totaled 2,968,274 contracts compared with 5 305 778 in 1998 and open interest at December 30 stood at 45,901 lots. Trading in commodity derivatives totaled 190,897 contracts representing 9,544,850 tonnes of underlying products. Rapeseed futures saw a rise of 33,2 % from the previous year, continuing the steady growth observed since the contract's launch five years ago. A number of records were set in 1999, notably on July 15 when 3,135 contracts representing 156,750 tonnes changed hands. During the year, several new products developed in partnership with industry professionals were added to the range of commodity derivatives. These were the option on rapeseed futures launched on May 28, the maize future launched on October 1 and the rapeseed meal future launched on October 29.