The Spanish Exchange Trades 181 New Warrants Issued By Banco Santander Central Hispano - With These Issues, The Number Of New Warrants Traded On The Market So Far This Year Stands At 1,740

The Spanish Exchange today began to trade 181 new warrants issued by Banco Santander Central Hispano. The new issues are linked to a wide range of strike prices and underlying assets: domestic and foreign shares and indices as well as exchange rates.

The Spanish shares that will act as the underlying assets for 92 warrants are as follows: Abertis, Acerinox, Altadis, BBVA, Endesa, Gamesa, Gas Natural, Iberdrola, Inditex, Indra, Banco Popular, Repsol, SCH, Telefónica and Zeltia. The foreign shares that will act as the underlying assets for 61 warrants are as follows: ABN, Alcatel, Allianz, Apple, Bayer, Carrefour, Coca Cola, Danone, Deutsche Telekom, E.ON, France Telecom, Google, Infineon, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Philips and Total Fina. It is worth mentioning the incorporation, for the first time, of Coca Cola and Infineon as new underlying assets.

As for the warrants on indices, 6 were issued on the IBEX 35® index and 6 on the international DAX.

As regards exchange rates, 12 issues were made on the Euro / Dollar exchange rate and 4 on the Euro / Yen.

Among the issues are call and put warrants, with expiry dates in September 2006 and March and June 2007. All issues are American style, that is, they are exercised on the expiry date.

With the incorporation of these new issues, the number of warrants traded on the exchange amounts to 1,992.

In July the volume of warrant premiums traded on the market was 259 million euros, which represents a 37% increase on the same month last year. During the first half of the year the value of warrants traded on the market reached € 1.50 bn, which represents a 44.6% increase on the first half last year.