Boston Options Exchange Delivers on its Promise of Price Improvement.

Business Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 2004

New Market Model Reports on First Three Months of Trading

Delivering over $2 per Contract in Price Improvement

The Boston Options Exchange (BOX), which launched in February, has successfully completed its first three months of trading. The innovative price improvement period (PIP) that was created by BOX has been delivering over $2 per contract in improved returns to investors since its launch.

"As evidenced by its performance in the first three months of operation, BOX has delivered on its promise of offering a market model that is faster, cheaper and provides substantial price improvement to the options industry," said Ken Leibler, Chairman of the Boston Options Exchange.

BOX had a rapid rollout of options classes during the first three months of its launch with over 230 stocks being traded by late April 2004. "We continue to see the interest grow in BOX as we have added more issues," said Will Easley, managing director of BOX. "We have on average nine market makers per symbol which provides for very active competition and high quality markets. For the top ten issues on OCC (Options Clearing Corporation) volume, BOX is matching or bettering the national best bid and offer (NBBO) over 80 percent of the time. As we and our participants are still fine tuning systems, we expect that figure to continue to improve."

BOX is the only options market that offers the price improvement period (PIP). "At Maxim Group, LLC, we route options orders to BOX through a third party execution vendor," said Leonard Greenbaum, Managing Director-Equity Derivatives at Maxim Group. "To the benefit of our customers, we have noticed price improvement on a high percentage of occasions."

The support for BOX continues to be strong in the number of participants, satisfaction levels with the innovative market model and the increasing level of usage of the new options exchange. "We think the BOX technology and price improvement facilitation is wonderful," said Tom Sosnoff, CEO of thinkorswim, Inc., one of the industry's largest retail option brokers. "What's good for the customer is good for our business."

About BOX:

The BOX model represents a significant innovation in options trading with a market structure that operates with unprecedented low-costs that eliminate barriers to trading, an electronic auction feature that offers customers price improvement, and a model that functions without a trading floor.

The Boston Options Exchange Group LLC (BOX) was established in February 2002 by Boston Stock Exchange, Inc. (BSE), Bourse de Montreal, Inc., and Interactive Brokers Group LLC. Four additional investors - Credit Suisse First Boston, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and UBS - subsequently joined as BOX partners. BOX is an all-electronic equity derivatives market and was created as an alternative to the existing market models. BOX launched trading in February 2004. For more information, see BOX website: www.bostonoptions.com. Since BOX is an all-electronic options exchange it provides great diversification for the Boston Stock Exchange's core business of equity trading.