Bourse de Montréal, Boston Stock Exchange and Interactive Brokers Form Partnership to Develop New Electronic Options Exchange in the U.S.

Bourse de Montréal Inc., Boston Stock Exchange, Inc., and Interactive Brokers Group LLC today announced the formation of Boston Options Exchange Group LLC to jointly establish an electronic exchange for United States securities options.

The options exchange, also known as BOX, will operate as a fully automated equity options market that will conduct trading in options on individual U.S. equities, equity indicies, exchange-traded funds, and single stock futures.

Bourse de Montréal Inc., through its trading platform, will provide technical and operational services for BOX and will license and customize electronic exchange software for derivatives trading. The Boston Stock Exchange will serve as the regulatory services provider, with oversight by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Interactive Brokers will provide options market design and marketing assets and will participate as a financial investor in BOX.

During its first six months of operation, BOX intends to list options contracts (calls and puts) on the 100 most actively traded U.S. equity issues with other classes to follow. Participation in BOX, which must be approved by the BSE, will generally be available to any dealer/broker in U.S. equities already subject to oversight by a self-regulating organization under the securities laws of the United States. All equity options traded on BOX will be cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation.

At present, BOX is developing its trading rules which will be submitted to the SEC for approval. Subject to such approval, the target for the commencement of trading on BOX is the last quarter of 2002.