NEWEX: Gazprom In NX.plus Segment

ADRs (American Depository Receipts) of OAO Gazprom, Russia's biggest gas company, are tradable in the NX.plus quality segment at NEWEX from April 25, 2002, as NEWEX, the market for Central and Eastern Europe, reported on Wednesday. With the inclusion of the ADRs of Gazprom NEWEX has further expanded the offerings for its international investors. Gazprom is the biggest Russian company in the gas sector with total assets of 80 billion euros (as of 30 Sep 2001). The corporation has about 300,000 employees working in a total of 160 subsidiaries.

NEWEX Executive Board member Erich Obersteiner said: "With the expansion of our offerings to include the ADRs of Gazprom, we are making available to our customers the most attractive line of products for Central and East European stocks. Our NX.plus quality segment gives market participants the lowest-cost access to liquid trading in East European growth stocks."

Eduard Ivanov, head of the Securities Department at Gazprom, added: "This step is aimed at further enhancing our profile in the most important international financial centers and bringing the company new investors at the same time."

NX.plus is the quality segment based on transparency criteria at NEWEX. These criteria include, among other things, reporting according to IAS or US-GAAP, regular presentations for analysts and investors, publication of a corporate calendar as well as the disclosure of price-relevant company information. Thus, nine leading companies are now listed in the NX.plus segment.

NEWEX, the market for Central and East European (CEE) securities, is a joint venture of Deutsche Börse AG and Wiener Börse AG. NEWEX is the market leader in trading of CEE securities in Germany with an average monthly turnover of more than 550 million euros. NEWEX is completely integrated into the trading environment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The securities are traded via the fully electronic Xetra trading system, which links over 400 market participants to NEWEX, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. NEWEX is the only market in which CEE securities can be traded in euros on a continuous basis and market makers provide for liquidity via a fully electronic system.