New Quality in Electronic Bond Trading on Xetra®

Deutsche Börse AG has further enhanced the parameters for electronic bond trading on Xetra since July 7, 1999: A new price and fee model reduces the transaction costs considerably. At the same time, a quote machine developed by Deutsche Börse enables the automated supply of buy and sell prices in the order book. According to the exchange, Deutsche Börse's new price and fee model reduces the trading fees by 85 percent. A transaction for 2 million euros, for example, now costs, just 2.50 euros instead of 16 euros. Three banks with international operations boost the liquidity on Xetra with continuous quotations in the benchmark German federal bonds throughout the trading period. This is technically supported by the quote machine, which enables automated reactions to changes in the market and thus fair and ongoing current prices. The new software contains automatic price and yield calculations as well as numerous individually configurable add-on functions that facilitate bond trading. The exchange indicated that other participants have already expressed an interest in deploying such quote machines. With this new initiative, Deutsche Börse is continuing to move forward with fully electronic securities trading on Xetra. In the meantime, 325 banks and securities trading firms from 13 European countries are already hooked up to the Xetra network and participating in securities trading via trading screens.