(February 21 – 15:30 ET) – Newspaper advertisements recently placed by State Street Global Advisors are inaccurate and misleading, says the Toronto Stock Exchange in prepared statement.

Richard Carleton, vice president of Index and Market Data Services with the TSE said he is concerned “that the content of the advertisements may be causing investor confusion in relation to the upcoming meetings of the unitholders of the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund.”

Meetings of unitholders of the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund are being convened by the TSE for the sole purpose of considering the proposed mergers of the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund with the iUnits S&P/TSE 60 Index Participation Fund. At the meetings, unitholders will be asked to approve the mergers pursuant to agreements between the 35 Fund, 100 Fund and the 60 Fund dated January 19, 2000. These meetings are to be held on February 28, 2000 at the TSE Conference Centre, The Exchange Tower, 2 First Canadian Place, Toronto, Ontario at 11:00 ET for the 35 Fund and 14:00 ET for the 100 Fund.

In the newspaper advertisements, says the TSE, SSGA implies that it intends to make a proposal at the meetings to enable unitholders to make a choice between the proposed mergers with the 60 Fund, and a proposal to merge the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund with its own recently established SSGA Dow Jones Canada 40 Index Participation Fund.

The TSE says SSGA has also represented that unitholders of the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund will be entitled to exercise their voting rights at the meetings for the purpose of considering SSGA’s proposal, and that they must do so if they wish to secure their right to a choice between the 60 Fund and the 40 Fund. These representations are inaccurate and misleading, says the TSE.

Notwithstanding SSGA’s representations to the contrary, there is no SSGA proposal to be considered by unitholders of the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund at the meetings, says the TSE. The Proposed Mergers are the products of approximately one-year of extensive negotiations among the TSE, S&P and BGI Canada. There are no such merger agreements in respect of any SSGA proposal and the units of the 40 Fund are not yet qualified for distribution to the public.

The purpose of the Proposed Mergers is to provide unitholders with a tax effective alternative method of terminating the 35 Fund and the 100 Fund in keeping with the TSE’s objective of eventually replacing the Toronto 35 Index and the 100 Index with the S&P/TSE 60 Index.
-IE Staff