Xetra

Around 320 European banks and securities trading houses currently (January 2004) use the Xetra® (Exchange Electronic Trading) system to trade the full range of shares listed on FWB® Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse and more than 10,000 warrants. Xetra is available between 9.00 a.m. and 17.30 p.m. Buy and sell orders placed by licensed brokers throughout the world are compared in a central computer and automatically executed when the number of shares and price are found to match. Designated Sponsors provide for additional liquidity during trading.

Xetra currently accounts for 75 percent of exchange turnover in German shares. In the case of the 30 DAX® blue chips, Xetra's market share comes to more than 95 percent.