The international derivatives exchange Eurex will further extend its product offering by introducing new equity options on Austrian and Swiss underlyings. Moreover, the exchange will launch more than 100 new single stock futures in December 2007 and January 2008.
The recently launched Austrian equity options segment will be extended with five new options on Austrian Airlines, Intercell, Österreichische Post, Strabag and Wiener Städtische Versicherung. The new options will be available as of December 10th. Since the launch of this segment in September, it has already gained – due to very competitive pricing – a market share of 25 percent (nominal value adjusted to be comparable with local derivatives market). To further incentivise trading and support liquidity of Austrian equity options, the trading fee in December 2007 will be lowered by 50 percent to 0.10 Euro cents.
Two new equity options on Swatch Bearer Shares and BB Biotech will be launched on December 17th and complement the Swiss equity options segment. Contract specifications of the new options will be in-line with the existing products.
Additionally, due to the inclusion of Deutsche Börse AG and Volkswagen into the Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50® index, Eurex will increase the available contract months for equity options based on these two underlyings from 24 months to 60 months as of December 10th.
As part of the announced single stock futures (SSFs) expansion, Eurex will also introduce 107 new SSFs in December 2007 and January 2008. A block of 17 single stock futures will start trading on 10 December, a block of further 20 SSFs will follow on December 17th and another block will be launched on January 7th, 2008. 54 out of these 57 new SSFs will have UK stocks as underlying and will be denominated in British Pound, the remaining three will be based on Russian underlyings and priced in US dollar. Starting on 21 January 2008, Eurex will further expand its offering with 50 single stock futures on US underlyings, namely the top companies of the benchmark index S&P 500.
