London - New York Share Settlement Pact To Reduce Costs Of Trading In US Equities For UK Investors

Private investors in the UK and Ireland looking to invest in Nasdaq®-listed stocks and other US equities will now be able to do so at much more attractive costs. CREST, the UK-based real-time securities settlement system, together with The Depository Trust Company (DTC), the US securities settlement system, today announced a link which is planned to go live in March 2000. This link should significantly reduce the cost of settling US securities for UK and Irish investors by providing access to DTC through existing CREST connections. Currently, the costs of settling international securities can be large as a result of brokers having to manage various complex interfaces to overseas settlement systems. Initially the CREST/DTC link will apply to Nasdaq and S&P 500 Index securities with the potential to expand at a later date. Iain Saville, Chief Executive of CRESTCo, the company which runs the CREST system, said: "This link will make it as easy to settle Microsoft shares as it is currently to settle Glaxo, as the cost for settling US equities within CREST will be similar to the current low tariffs for UK securities." Brian Holland, Executive VP of World-wide Marketing for Nasdaq said, "Nasdaq has long championed the interests of the UK private investor. We have been delighted to share our insights into how best to make the US market accessible to the UK private investor. We believe that the CREST and DTC agreement represents an important milestone to providing affordable access to the US market." "We're very pleased to establish this link with CRESTCo," said Jill Considine, DTC's Chairman and CEO. "DTC has worked to establish similar links with depositories around the world to give investors better access to Wall Street while letting US-listed companies broaden their shareholder base." The UK/US link will involve CREST opening an account with DTC, enabling its participating firms to have access to DTC via their existing CREST connections. This is the first time DTC will connect with another settlement system using a communications method that the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) is proposing as a standard for Europe. Intel, one of the best known US companies among UK private investors, today applauded the move. "We at Intel strongly support any initiative that will help to make the US markets more accessible to the UK investor," said Arvind Sodhani, VP and Treasurer at Intel Corporation.