Eurex: Record Trading Volume Of More Than 379 Million Contracts Makes Eurex The World's Largest Derivatives Exchange Going Into The New Millennium - Volume Of 27.4 Million Contracts Traded In December

Eurex, the European derivatives exchange, closed out the year 1999 with record turnover in excess of 379 million contracts. This makes Eurex the world's largest derivatives exchange going into the new millenium, ahead of CBOT, based on the preliminary figures of some 255 million contracts traded. The growth rate at Eurex is also record-setting: Trading volumes for 1999 (at 379,148,639 contracts) are 53 percent higher than the corresponding figures for 1998 (248,222,487 contracts). This growth is reflected in the December trading volumes: 27.4 million contracts were traded in December 1999, as opposed to 15.8 million contracts in December 1998. The BUND future was the most heavily traded product, with 7.6 million contracts traded, as compared with 4.8 million in December 1998. In the bond market, the biggest gains were achieved with more than 260 percent growth in options on futures: O-Shaz (+138 percent), O-Bobl (+591 percent) and O-Bund (253 percent). From an annual perspective, the derivatives on the Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 showed the best performance of all the new products. With total turnover of 9.1 million contracts, Eurex has 94 percent of the total trading volume in Europe. Overall, the index derivatives achieved turnover of more than 6.5 million contracts for the month of December, which corresponds to an increase of about 55 percent over the previous year's figure. Among the Finnish products, the option on Nokia was the most convincing: Over 22,000 contracts were traded in December; over 50,000 contracts have been traded since the launch on September 27, 1999.