CME Plans to Trade S&P Euro and S&P Euro Plus Indexes

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) today filed for regulatory approval to trade two Standard & Poor's European stock indexes, one consisting of stocks from countries participating in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the other consisting of stocks in both EMU and non-EMU nations. The CME is also in the process of discussing opportunities for cooperation with various European exchanges in trading the products. "CME futures and options on the S&P Euro Index and S&P Euro Plus Index will provide institutions and investors a way to manage risk or participate in the European stock market at the dawn of EMU," CME Chairman Scott Gordon said. "These index products will facilitate the trend of equity managers toward regarding Europe as an integrated region rather than a collection of separate countries." "Standard & Poor's established the broad-based equity benchmark for the U.S. stock market in the S&P 500," CME President and CEO Rick Kilcollin said. "In the same way, the S&P Euro and Euro Plus Indexes cover a broad spectrum of the European equity market, making them more representative of the overall market." "We are proud of our longstanding relationship with the CME," said Robert Shakotko, Senior Vice President, S&P Index Services. "This is an important step for both of us as we continue to serve the needs of investors worldwide." The S&P Euro Index is a capitalization-weighted index of 157 stocks from 10 EMU countries-Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The S&P Euro Plus index includes 200 securities from these countries, as well as Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Each CME S&P Euro or Euro Plus Index futures contract will be sized at 50 Euros times the index price, and the minimum prices fluctuation will be 0.25 index points (equaling 12.5 Euros). The contract months to be listed for trading will be March, June, September and December. Options on all four quarterly contract months, plus the nearest two months, will also be listed for trading. The products will be traded electronically on the GLOBEX®2 system, virtually around the clock, from 15:30 (Chicago time) until 15:15 the following day. The S&P Euro index represented a capital pool of some USD2.04 trillion as of Dec. 31, 1998, with the four largest stocks-Royal Dutch Petroleum, Daimler Chrysler, Nokia and International Nederlanden Group (ING)-accounting for 13.5 percent of capitalization. The S&P Euro Plus index represented a capital pool of USD2.63 trillion as of Dec.31, 1998, with the four largest stocks-Novartis, Royal Dutch Petroleum, Nestle and Daimler Chrysler-representing 14.5 percent of capitalization.