Today, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control ('OFAC') has notified Clearstream Banking S.A. ('Clearstream'), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Deutsche Börse AG, that following Clearstream's ongoing discussions with OFAC since learning of OFAC's indicative penalty in January 2013, OFAC has closed its investigation of possible violations of U.S. sanctions. OFAC has informed Clearstream that if it were to issue a formal pre-penalty notice at this time, such notice would include a penalty of USD 168,780,000. Clearstream now has the option to settle the matter with OFAC, in which case a 10% discount would apply for a total settlement payment of USD 151,902,000. Within the scope of its investigation, OFAC had looked into Clearstream's maintenance of an omnibus account in the United States and certain securities transfers within the Clearstream settlement system in 2008. These transfers had related to the decision taken by Clearstream in 2007 to close its Iranian customers' accounts. Deutsche Börse AG has already informed about this matter by way of an ad hoc disclosure on 9 January 2013. A settlement with OFAC would not constitute a final determination that a violation has occurred.
The competent boards within Deutsche Börse Group will analyse the information received and will decide on whether to reach a settlement with OFAC.
Deutsche Börse Group will include an amount consistent with today's notification from OFAC as a provision in its financial statements for the third quarter 2013.
