Lithuania To Adopt Common Nordic Baltic Cash Trading Platform In May

OMX, the largest Nordic securities market operator, which also operates the Vilnius Stock Exchange (VSE), today announced that Lithuania will join the common Nordic Baltic cash trading platform SAXESS™ on May 30, 2005. With Vilnius Stock Exchange joining the SAXESS trading system, OMX has taken a further step towards an integrated Nordic Baltic securities market.

“The common trading system will provide the members of OMX exchanges and investors easy access to the Lithuanian as well as other Baltic and Nordic securities markets and enhance liquidity as more members will be able to trade the Lithuanian securities”, said the President of OMX Exchanges' Baltic Markets, Johan Rudén. He added that the trading hours of the Baltic markets will be harmonized and all OMX stock exchanges will work under harmonized trading rules.

“The implementation of the project opens new possibilities for the VSE members to broaden their operations in Nordic Baltic region. For listed companies it will be easier to attract additional foreign capital and for all Lithuanian investors it will be easier to invest in other markets” – said the President of VSE Dalia Jasulaityte.

Benefits of a common Nordic Baltic market are among others:

• Harmonized trading hours for the Baltic stock exchanges (10:00 – 14:00 EET).
• Harmonized trading day structure at OMX Exchanges (opening call, continuous trading, closing call).
• Common trading platform and trading rules, the NOREX Member Rules at eight Nordic and Baltic exchanges, including the OMX Exchanges and its NOREX alliance partners.
• Joint Baltic market with a common Baltic securities list, harmonized listing rules and a cross-border delivery-versus-payment link.
• Joint Baltic market dataweb for statistics on the Internet.

Currently the SAXESS trading system is used by the OMX Exchanges in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia and Estonia as well as the exchanges in Iceland and Norway. OMX implemented this system in Tallinn, Riga and Helsinki in the fall of 2004. Lithuania’s integration into the common Nordic Baltic securities market was started by OMX after the privatization of VSE and part of the Central Securities Depository of Lithuania in May 2004.

As of launch of the new trading system SAXESS™, the VSE will stop calculating its real-time price index LITIN-10. From the launch of the new system, VILSE index will replace LITIN-10 and will become a real-time index. A capitalization weighted index VILSE is constructed for all listed shares on the VSE and is currently calculated after the end of the VSE trading session.

Through OMX Exchanges OMX offers access to about 80 percent of the Nordic and Baltic securities markets. The total value of the stock market operated by OMX reached over EUR 415 billion last year. In year 2004, OMX Exchanges revenues overstepped SEK 1735 m (EUR 186 m). 310 employees worked at OMX Exchanges at the end of last year.