At a press conference in Frankfurt, Volker Potthoff, the Deutsche Börse Executive Board member responsible for the cash market, highlighted the benefits of electronic warrants trading: "With this segment, which is used above all by private investors, we will significantly enhance the efficiency of warrants trading," Potthoff said. He pointed out that with Xetra, Deutsche Börse is offering a recognized platform that enables access to this attractive market segment for more than 400 market participants all over Europe. According to Potthoff, investors have the combined benefits of faster execution, greater security and fairness as well as lower costs due to the elimination of the brokerage fee. In addition, Deutsche Börse will not charge any fees for transactions in Xetra warrants trading until July 31, 2000. Deutsche Börse will make real-time prices for Xetra warrants available on the Internet free of charge.
The German warrants market is the most important European warrants market. Over 14,000 warrants are currently listed at FWB, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and the number of listings has risen 65 percent in the last 12 months. During the first quarter of 2000, some 4.4 billion euros in warrants changed hands, which is almost three times as high as the 1.5 billion euros in warrants traded during the same period of last year.
