Trading in the shares of T-Online International AG starts on April 17 around 9:30 a.m., the first price in broker-supported trading and on Xetra should then be available around 10:00 a.m. Deutsche Börse made this announcement in Frankfurt on Tuesday. According to Deutsche Börse, the later initiation of trading in these shares-trading otherwise gets under way at 9:00 a.m. for the market as a whole - will straighten out the processing. It will also give market participants and investors more time to put in orders for T-Online shares. The Frankfurt exchange indicated that this procedure had been agreed on in consultation with the market participants and will also be valid for the other German stock exchanges.
With a view to the initial public offering of T-Online shares and the sharp increase in trading volume in recent months, capacity has been expanded for the BOSS-BOEGA (order-routing and settlement-data) systems for trading on the floor, as Deutsche Börse reported. Share turnover during the first quarter was two and a half times as high compared with first-quarter 1999, rising to volume of 1.7 trillion euros. On March 13, when the Infineon shares were floated, record order volumes were processed in this issue as well as in the market as a whole. The performance capacity is much higher now as a result of software and hardware measures, which have been implemented step by step, as reported. "Trading volumes of 694,000 orders in the market as a whole and 239,000 orders in a stock like Infineon are now easy to cope with," said Dr. Michael Kuhn, Chief IT-Officer at Deutsche Börse.
Should extremely high volumes on the first trading day for T-Online again lead to delays in confirmations of order execution, the German stock exchanges want to replace variable-price trading on the floor, if necessary, with a small number of auctions. This step will initially only be a possibility in the case of T-Online shares and in the next escalation phase, for the market as a whole, according to Deutsche Börse.
