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THE GREEK CAPITAL MARKETS AFTER EMU

Referring to the Greek financial markets, in addition to what has been mentioned in the beginning by the ASE General Manager Mr. Lazarides, please allow me to say a few more words for the Greek capital market. The Greek capital market has progressed greatly in terms of rules and regulations for the ASE, its members and the market, in terms of technological changes, transparency, safety, investor protection and enrichment with new markets and products. Also, the Athens Stock Exchange's records in terms of index performance, number of individual investors from Greece and abroad transactions volume, listed companies, IPOs, secondary offerings and capitalization. Measured also in the form of ratios such as capitalization to GDP and turnover ratio daily transaction to capitalization, 62%, 1998), depict not only its impressive growth in recent years, but also its depth in term of liquidity and daily turnover, as well as its overall credibility. All these, we believe create the conditions for the upgrading of the Greek capital market, placing it to the group of mature markets. It is our firm belief that investment opportunities do exist in Athens Stock Exchange when judging from the expected economic results of listed companies for this year in combination with the good course of the fundamental of the Greek economy.

We feel confident to say that the investors' choices on Greek stocks will be compensated with satisfactory returns.

In addition to the stock market, Greece now has an organized derivatives market. That was created and put in operation last August with the aim to further improve the Greek capital market to make it more transparent, safe, and mature, more attractive for investors, enhancing their choices and providing them with the ability to combine their investments in ASE with those in ADEX, or even to take independent positions in ADEX. ADEX operates smoothly and reliably with a rising volume in its contracts, with both private and institutional investors from Greece and abroad. Both trading and clearing are, fully electronic, there is regular supervision of trading and members' trading, active risk management inside ADEX, daily transaction settlement and daily margin calculation and posting, while margin are in the forum of cash, stocks and bonds. Through the web site you can be informed on ADEX's organizational structure, rules and regulations and product characteristics. You can also approach its 31 members, so far. We should mention that remote membership is allowed in the Athens Derivatives Exchange.

So far, three derivative products are in operation, futures on two indices, namely FTSE/ASE-20 and FTSE/ASE mid 40, as well as futures on ten-year government bond. In late March, index options will also be introduced in the above mentioned tow indices, while stock options will start in May. Stock lending is also going to be introduced as a product managed, cleared and guaranteed by ADECH beyond the OTC stock lending which is allowed in Greece, for ADEX market makers.