The enhancements include a reduction in all trading fees of between 17% and 50%, new block trading arrangements (1) applying to order sizes of more than 10,000 contracts, and more efficient market making schemes, in which market makers will supply continuous quotes in the market, as well as responding to specific requests for quotes.
These new initiatives are made possible by the fact that the Paris derivatives market migrates to LIFFE CONNECT™, the world's most advanced derivatives trading platform, on 14 April 2003. These changes are the result of extensive customer consultation and are intended to improve our position in the French equity options market.
Hugh Freedberg, Chief Executive of Euronext.liffe said: "The over-the-counter (OTC) market in European equity derivatives has grown significantly over the last four years. We want to attract more of that growing business onto Euronext.liffe. We can already offer OTC customers central clearing which eliminates their counterparty risk. Following the migration of the Paris market to LIFFE CONNECT™ we are now able to support the additional functions we are announcing today. These initiatives are designed to attract wholesale business onto our market by offering customers the lower risk, lower cost, high quality marketplace they have told us they want".
The initiatives complement the announcement last week that Euronext.liffe would launch 27 more options on major German stocks from 7 April 2003 to give customers complete coverage of the DAX 30 index.
(1) Subject to final regulatory approval
