SFE To Be Fully Informed Before Naming Index Of Choice

The Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) will seek clarification from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and Standard & Poor's (S&P) about the sale of ASX's indexing business before it proceeds with its own decision on the choice of an index to underlie its new equity futures contract. SFE has some important legal and technical concerns arising from ASX's intention to sell and re-brand its entire index business to S&P. SFE is endeavouring to act quickly and prudently to minimise any disruption to the futures market caused by ASX's index restructure. Since January this year, SFE has been consulting the market extensively regarding the choice of an index to underlie a new equity futures contract. The need to launch a new contract was necessitated by the changes ASX is making to the All Ordinaries Index (AOI) from 3 April 2000. SFE has already created certainty for uses of its SPI® contract by reaching an agreement with ASX on 5 January 2000, whereby the ASX will continue to disseminate the existing AOI, to be know as the Share Price Index, until September 2001. The agreement also gives SFE a licence to list a futures contract on one of the new ASX100, ASX200 or ASX300 benchmark indices. SFE intends to provide the market with incentives to transition to the new contract and had targeted early May for the contract's launch.