Reuters Broadens Foreign Exchange Community.

LONDON -- Reuters (LSE: RTR, NASDAQ: RTRSY) today launched a new service which allows banks and their customers to trade foreign exchange from their Reuters desktop. Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange builds on the company's leading global foreign exchange position, helping banks to reduce costs and expand the reach of their prices. It also extends the multi-asset Reuters Trading suite of capabilities beyond fixed income, equities, and futures into spot and forward foreign exchange.

Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange (RTFX) launched today globally with tradable prices. Fourteen global institutions, including ANZ, Barclays Capital, Calyon, Danske Bank, Handelsbanken Capital Markets, Lehman Brothers, National Australia Bank, Nordea, Resona Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, a large UK bank and other global and regional institutions, will be supporting the capability and are all expected to go live over the next few months.

Mark Robson, Head of Reuters Treasury and Fixed Income services, said: "This launch is a major milestone for Reuters in serving the changing needs of the FX marketplace and our customers. Overtime, we will extend RTFX to serve the FX trading needs of a wide range of customers, covering global and regional banks, corporate treasurers and investment and hedge funds. We are delighted with the support and enthusiasm our pioneering customers have shown and Reuters will be actively building its capability and service to repay them for their commitment."

RTFX brings financial market professionals the ability to quickly and securely execute spot and forward FX and manage post trade processing through a single sign-on, utilising Reuters unrivalled global desktop footprint in the FX marketplace. This capability is supported by the comprehensive, real time news and powerful analytics from Reuters 3000 Xtra and Reuters Dealing 3000 terminals, at no additional cost, allowing price takers to effectively manage their trading positions.

Initially, Reuters is focusing on developing the electronic FX flow between global and regional banks and their corporate treasury and financial institution customers. RTFX will help stream-line access to bank FX liquidity at competitive transaction rates, whilst simplifying the trading cycle, reducing processing costs and eliminating transaction errors. By 2006, Reuters plans to extend RTFX to serve a wider range of customers, such as investment and hedge funds.

RTFX allows banks to capitalise on their e-commerce infrastructure investments by distributing them to Reuters 327,000 desktop community. The capability is based on the company's proven Reuters Electronic Trading technology, which is used by more than 90 leading foreign exchange banks.

Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange has the backing of a number of the industry's key players. Comments on today's announcement include:

Bob Smith, Director Markets Technology, ANZ Investment Bank, said: "We see our participation in the RTFX pilot programme as an integral part of our ongoing investment in our Markets "E" Commerce strategy that supports ANZ's service proposition of ensuring that our customers can choose the delivery channel that is most appropriate for their business needs. We are very pleased to be doing this in conjunction with a key business partner."

Andrew Kellner, Global Head of FX & Commodities, Calyon, said: "Participating in the Reuters RTFX pilot in conjunction with the deployment of the Reuters RET platforms allows Calyon to efficiently and expediently access existing and new clients via the Reuters desktop franchise."

Jesper Ronald Petersen, Head of Global Flow & Solutions, Danske Bank, said: "The prospect of using Reuters neutral desktops to expand the reach of our FX prices and instruments is very appealing. We're pleased to see Reuters taking advantage of its vast desktop franchise to serve FX markets with Danske's FX rates in this way."

Bjoern Lundvall, Vice President and Head, e-commerce markets, Handelsbanken Capital Markets, said: "Through RTFX we will be able to provide our customers with Handelsbanken Capital Markets' e-FX-capabilities over a well-established platform. Reuters experience and client-base in the foreign exchange market will make RTFX a valuable addition to our existing e-FX offerings."

Jeff Lee, Global Head of Foreign Exchange, NAB, said: "RTFX provides us with an opportunity to efficiently extend distribution of FX product and liquidity to new and existing clients globally. Our focus will be on AUD and NZD, leveraging on the expertise of the National Australia Bank and the Bank of New Zealand in these, our core currencies."

Kenneth Steengaard, Head of e-Markets, Nordea, said: "We welcome the opportunity to widen our FX distribution outreach through the Reuters RTFX initiative, building directly on the infrastructure supporting the Nordea e-Markets e-commerce offering. This is a natural extension of the long term co-operation between Reuters and Nordea within the electronic trading area and we are anxious to see the take-up of the new service among both new and existing clients."

Martin Severn, Global Head of eSales, Standard Chartered Bank, said: "At Standard Chartered Bank, we see RTFX and Reuters emerging markets footprint as a further step towards leveraging our expertise in these markets, particularly with our specialist currencies."

Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange is widely available on Reuters 3000 Xtra and Reuters Dealing 3000 desktops. RTFX will be showing at the ACI Congress opening in Stockholm this week. For more information on RTFX see: www.reuters.com/tradingfx.

Reuters has the largest foreign exchange community with roughly 112,000 foreign exchange professionals across 125 countries relying on the company's news and information. Reuters Dealing 3000 platform is used by nearly 18,000 FX and money market professionals across 4,000 organizations to trade FX spot, forwards, options and futures, plus interest rate and overnight index swaps.

Note to Editors:

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