Frankfurt Stock Exchange Council Approves New Segmentation for Equity

At its meeting on Wednesday, the Exchange Council of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse) voted unanimously for the plan for a new segmentation of the equity market at FWB. In the next step, the Council is expected to pass the necessary amendments to the Exchange Rules in November. Then, as of early 2003, there will be two disclosure standards for equities listed on FWB, differing in terms of the transparency requirements. Based on these segments, Deutsche Börse will introduce a new sectoral index concept. These changes make investors the focus of market organization. They are aimed at strengthening investor confidence with the highest transparency standards in Europe as well as enabling simpler investment decision-making with a new index logic.

In the provisionally named Domestic Standard, the high standards prescribed by German law will apply. The exchange council has recommended investigating alternative names for the Domestic Standard. In Prime Standard, these criteria will be joined by internationally accepted transparency requirements: quarterly reports, international accounting standards IAS or US-GAAP, a corporate calender, at least one analysts' meeting per year as well as ad-hoc disclosure, also in English. The target group for Domestic Standard are issuers with more of a national focus, whereas Prime Standard is designed to give issuers access to the international capital market.