| 06 December 2007 Deutsche Börse Commodities: Deutsche Börse AG and its partners Bankhaus Metzler, Bank Vontobel, Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Bank AG, DZ Bank AG and Umicore AG & Co. KG formed the joint venture Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH at the end of November. The aim of the new company is to offer innovative types of securitization for commodities and to ensure cost-effective trading in an alliance with the partners. The first product to be issued by Deutsche Börse Commodities will be “Xetra-Gold”, a physically backed bond (ISIN: DE000A0S9GB0). Every unit represents the option of one gram of gold to be delivered and can be bought and sold from 14 December onwards via the Xetra trading platform. The bond combines the benefits of physical gold with exchanged-traded securities: gold counts to be protection against inflation and, as a commodity with a low correlation, is ideal for risk diversification in securities accounts. Exchange-based trading makes the securitized commodity fungible and liquid, and lends transparency to the pricing process. The materials technology group Umicore AG & KG, an industry partner, supplies the gold, which is stored in the vault of the central securities depository Clearstream Banking Frankfurt AG – a Deutsche Börse subsidiary. The safe custody of the gold reserves at Clearstream meets high security standards and saves investors the costs of transporting and storing physical gold. The securities issued can be traded on an ongoing basis without a time delay and – if desired – can be exchanged for the underlying physical amount of gold via the investor’s own bank. Martina Gruber, managing director of Deutsche Börse Commodities, said, “We are delighted to have joined forces with such well-known partners, all of which possess many years of expertise in the financial and commodities market. By bundling our strengths, we aim to help reduce the trading inefficiencies on the existing commodities markets and to enable more cost-effective trading. Both investors and trading participants will benefit from the creation of a liquid market.” “Portfolio experts advise clients to invest a certain proportion of their assets in commodities, as they perform relatively independently of other types of securities. Nevertheless, there is a lack of cost-effective investment alternatives. With innovative securitizations, we will offer investors direct access to the commodities market and a cost-effective opportunity to diversify their portfolios,” said Steffen Orben, managing director of Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH. Martina Gruber
Martina Gruber, Clearstream AG, has 17 years’ experience in the financial industry. With 7 of those years spent at Deutsche Börse AG, she is familiar with the entire process chain of stock exchange trading (issue, trading, clearing, custody). Prior to that, she was employed at Financial Markets Service Bank GmbH, Munich, at Management Team Unternehmensberatung, Wiesbaden, and at KPMG in Frankfurt. Steffen Orben
Steffen Orben, Deutsche Bank AG, has 15 years’ experience in currencies and commodities. For more than eleven years, he has held a variety of different positions in currency and commodities trading for Deutsche Bank AG. Before joining Deutsche Bank, he was a currency trader at JP Morgan in London. The prospectus can be obtained from Deutsche Börse Commodities, Neue Börsenstrasse 1, 60487 Frankfurt. |
