Standard & Poor's Announces First Six S&P 500 Stocks To Participate In Pilot To Use Amex Closing Prices

Standard & Poor's and the American Stock Exchange (Amex) announced today the names of six Nasdaq securities in the S&P 500 Index, the most widely used benchmark to track U.S. stock market performance, to participate in a pilot program to use standardized auction market closing prices provided by the Amex.

The pilot, which was announced on October 8th, will begin on December 1, 2003 and run until early 2004, during which time six additional Nasdaq stocks will be added to the program. If successful, the pilot could be expanded by Standard & Poor's to include changes in index pricing procedures for closing prices for all Nasdaq-listed securities in the S&P 500.

The first six stocks to participate in the program are:

Altera Corporation (Symbol:ALTR)
Genzyme Corp. (Symbol:GENZ)
Huntington Bancshares (Symbol:HBAN)
nVIDIA, Inc. (Symbol:NVDA)
Starbucks Corporation (Symbol:SBUX)
Staples, Inc. (Symbol:SPLS)

Salvatore F. Sodano, Amex chairman and CEO, said, "We are extremely pleased with the six stocks selected to participate in this pilot program. These securities represent a cross section of industries, levels of trading activity and market capitalization, to ensure a diverse sample for the pilot. The Amex is proud that Standard & Poor's has chosen our market as their first alternative for pricing procedures for Nasdaq-listed stocks."

Brett Redfearn, senior vice president of Amex Business Strategy, said, "This initiative is being undertaken for the simple reason that the Amex auction market closing process has clear advantages over Nasdaq's dealer market close."

Standard & Poor's initiated the pilot program for the S&P 500 in response to the investment community's demands for more efficiency and reliability in pricing procedures for Nasdaq securities. Standard & Poor's will use the pilot to determine whether the Amex auction market system provides better results for index users than the Nasdaq dealer system.