Co-operation agreement between the Lisbon Stock Exchange and PARISBOURSE SBF SA

PARISBOURSE SBF SA and the Lisbon Stock Exchange signed a co-operation agreement on Friday in Paris giving the members of the two markets direct access to the listed companies on each exchange. This agreement completes the acquisition made by the Lisbon Stock Exchange of NSC, the PARISBOURSE SBF SA electronic trading system which has been operating in Lisbon since the beginning of this year. This agreement provides for the implementation of a cross-membership mechanism and a technical inter-connection of the trading systems of the two exchanges, enabling members to trade the French and Portuguese listed securities from their present trading screens. The agreement was signed by the respective Chairmen of the Lisbon Stock Exchange, Antonio Nogueira Leite, and PARISBOURSE SBF SA, Jean-François Théodore. For Antonio Nogueira Leite, " This agreement is in keeping with our ambitions to make the Lisbon Stock Exchange a financial marketplace in its own right in Europe, specially by this association with one of the exchanges taking part to the European Equity Alliance project. It completes the same type of agreement recently signed with the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange, the number one Latin American exchange ". For his part, Jean-François Théodore noted that the NSC technology used by Paris, Lisbon and Sao Paulo makes this cross-access agreement possible. He also expressed his satisfaction for this new partnership with the Lisbon Stock Exchange which is a step further in the integration of European financial markets. NSC was launched in 1995 and has since been adopted by 15 cash and derivatives exchanges worldwide, including Brussels, Lisbon, Toronto, the CME in Chicago, Sao Paulo, the SIMEX in Singapore, Tunis, Casablanca and Beirut.