Advanced Investment Technology Launches Long/Short Market Neutral Strategy; ABP Is Founding Client Of New Strategy.

Business/Technology Editors

CLEARWATER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2001

Advanced Investment Technology, Inc. (AIT), a unit of State Street Global Alliance LLC, today announced it has launched a long/short market neutral strategy and secured ABP, the second largest pension fund in the world, as its first client for the new investment product.

The long/short market neutral strategy applies AIT's patented stock selection process to generate stock-specific return forecasts for all of the stocks within the strategy's eligible selection universe. The objective of the absolute return strategy is to generate total returns net of fees above the 91-day U.S. Treasury Bill benchmark with a low correlation to major stock and bond markets. Investments may be in equity securities of U.S. corporations and non-U.S. companies traded on U.S. securities exchanges.

"We are excited by the opportunity to access AIT's proprietary investment capabilities through this innovative product offering," said Jan Straatman, chief investment officer Global Equities of ABP Investments. "The AIT team has a strong track record of outperforming their established benchmarks and delivering significant value through the firm's unique combination of advanced fundamental portfolio analysis and leading-edge quantitative techniques. AIT and their investment strategies complement and facilitate our active portfolio management objectives of providing significant returns while maintaining rigorous portfolio risk controls."

"We are extremely excited about the potential of our long/short market neutral strategy," said Doug Case, president and chief investment officer of AIT. "Our definition of market neutrality goes far beyond the simple measures of cash, beta and sector balancing to include the hedging of all common factor sources of market risk. With ABP - one of the world's largest and most sophisticated pension funds - as a founding client, and State Street and ABP as close partners, we look forward to continuing to introduce advanced active portfolio management strategies and expanding our client base among institutions and individual investors around the globe."

AIT is majority owned by State Street Global Alliance LLC, a strategic partnership of State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) and ABP.

About Advanced Investment Technology, Inc. (AIT)

Formed in 1996, Clearwater, Florida-based AIT is a pioneer and leader in the use of advanced quantitative methods to manage financial assets. AIT's investment strategies are based on patented computer-driven models that select stocks and create portfolios. Its models differ from other quantitative managers in their use of non-linear analysis and artificial intelligence, such as neural networks and genetic algorithms that allow a computer to learn from its information processing. Using these programs, a computer can rebuild its investment research models with newly gained knowledge. AIT believes the unique perspectives gained through the use of its process are especially effective in evaluating the prospects of larger cap stocks, which are more widely followed by analysts. AIT offers five US equity investment strategies to institutional and high-net-worth individuals.

About ABP:

ABP is the pension fund for public employees in the governmental and education sectors in the Netherlands. With assets amounting to nearly 150 billion Euros at year-end 2000, ABP is the second largest pension fund in the world. Its client base totals some 2.2 million participants and retirees (e.g.: civil servants, education, universities, police and fireman). At year-end 2000 ABP's asset mix consisted of 53% fixed income, 38% equities, and 9% real estate. The strategic aim is to further enhance investment returns through a decrease of fixed income in favor of equities and an increase of private equity and other alternative investments and the portfolio of long-term complex products such as: structured finance and corporate bonds.

More than 1/3 of ABP's assets are invested outside Europe. ABP's assets are managed by ABP Investments. Its focus is on internally managed portfolios, a further international spread of the investments and an active investment policy. ABP Investments has strategic alliances with NIB Capital and State Street and it hires external managers for specialist mandates and innovative investments. ABP's head office is in Heerlen (the Netherlands) with other offices of ABP Investments in Amsterdam and New York.

About State Street Corporation

With $5.8 trillion in assets under custody and $663 billion under management, State Street Corporation is the world's leading specialist in meeting the needs of sophisticated global investors. Offices are located in the United States, Canada, Chile, Cayman Islands, Netherlands Antilles, Ireland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, United Arab Emirates, Russia, People's Republic of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Australia. State Street Corporation's common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol STT. For more information, visit State Street's Website at www.statestreet.com.