The Spanish Exchange Trades 82 New Warrants Issued By Banco Santander Central Hispano

The Spanish Exchange yesterday began trading 82 new warrants issued by Banco Santander Central Hispano. There is a wide range of underlying assets for the warrants, among which are domestic and foreign shares and indices as well as exchange rates.

The Spanish shares that will act as the underlying assets for 50 warrant are as follows: Altadis, BBVA, Endesa, Gas Natural, Iberdrola, Inditex, Indra, Repsol, Santander, Sogecable, Telefónica and Zeltia. As to the warrants issued on foreign shares, 9 were issued on the following underlying assets: Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Nokia.

As to the warrants issued on indices, 4 were issued on the Ibex 35, another 4 on both the Dow Jones Industrial Average international index and the Nikkei and 3 on the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50. Another 8 warrants were issued on the Euro / Dollar exchange rate.

Among the issues are call and put warrants, all of which work in the same way as American warrants, that is, they are exercised automatically by the issuer and their expiry date is 16 June 2006.

The volume traded in warrant premiums came in at €189 million, which represents a 74% increase on the year. The value of premiums traded during the first half of the year was € 1.03 bn, a 12% increase on the year.