CBOT To Launch 30-Year Swap Future Contracts

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT®) today announced plans to launch a new 30-year Interest Rate Swap futures contract on March 19, 2007. CBOT 30-year Swap futures contracts are designed to provide market participants with a standardized approach to gaining swap rate exposure in a centralized marketplace. The new futures contracts will offer comparable price/yield characteristics to "plain-vanilla" swaps, with the added benefits of an exchange-traded product.

The CBOT Swap futures complex, which also includes 5-Year and 10-Year Swap futures contracts, saw volume increase by more than 50 percent during the last six months of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005.

CBOT Senior Vice President of Business Development Robert D. Ray said, "Expanding our Swap complex with 30-year Swap futures will allow participants the opportunity to make capital-efficient yield curve and spread trades between CBOT Treasury futures and Swap futures. In addition, the 30-year Swap futures contract will provide the swap market with a tradable reference point that was previously non-existent at the long end of the swap curve."

Michael Conway, CFA, Senior Vice President and Senior Investment Officer at Aon Corporation said, "We believe that CBOT 30-year Swap futures will be a valuable tool for pension plans and others to control the impact of interest rate volatility on reported financial results. The opportunity to use price discovery as a tool, and maintain strong counterparty exposure are the essence of what 30-year Swap futures contracts can provide."

The 30-year Swap futures will be traded side-by-side, on both the CBOT electronic trading platform and in open auction, providing market participants with the opportunity to choose their preferred trading venue and to facilitate curve and spread trades. The new contract will trade from 7:20 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. CST under the ticker symbol NZ in the open auction environment and QS on the Exchange's electronic trading platform.

The CBOT also intends to create a market maker program to help ensure that a two-sided market will be readily available for electronic trading. Interested parties should contact the CBOT at 312-341-7955. For further information on the CBOT Interest Rate Swap complex, please visit www.cbot.com. -- www.cbot.com