The third Trilateral Capital Market Meeting took place in Athens, between the 20th and the 22nd of February, with the participation of the Exchanges, Central Security Depositories, Brokerage Associations and brokerage members of Turkey, Israel and Greece. The three country participants have already decided to take initiatives and actions for the promotion of cooperation between the three markets, in particular, the establishment of member to member cross trading, the launch of trilateral equity index and the undertaking of promotional activities. At the same time, the three parties aim at increasing the foreign portfolio flows to the region of southeast Europe, southeast Mediterranean.

As far as member to member cross trading is concerned, as there is now technical solution available for linking members, the three Exchanges encourage members to move to member to member agreements and start transactions and cross trading.

On the part of the Exchanges, ATHEX, ISE, TASE, actions will be undertaken to facilitate cross border trading. Namely, the three Exchanges are to:

• Launch, at the end of the year, a trilateral index composed of high capitalization stocks of the three countries. They will also construct a benchmark index. To this they will cooperate with an international index provider.

• Prepare an information manual on the functioning (trading, clearing settlement) and characteristics of each market, including general information, useful to all market participants and investors.

• Make presentations related to the respective capital markets to stock market participants in the cities of Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Athens.

• Actively promote the new index, with road shows presenting the markets and the listed companies included in the said index.

• Put particular emphasis on: information and disclosure to market participants and investor protection in cooperation with the three capital market boards / commissions/regulators.

The three Exchanges encourage within the jurisdiction and subject to the approval of their respective regulators:

• Member associations to raise awareness of their members, on member to member cooperation and bilateral agreements.

• Listed companies to consider in their roadshows the three countries, namely, Turkey, Israel and Greece.

• Underwriters of IPOs to also include the three countries in their IPOs presentations.

The three exchanges and CSDs also undertake the responsibility to inform their counterparts on a regular basis on developments that are taking place on Exchanges, Clearing and Settlement houses. They will also work to facilitate dissemination of company disclosures on a timely basis in the three countries.

It should be mentioned that in the trilateral meeting of the CSDs (20-21 February) an important decision has been made, namely the establishment of CSD links among them by June 2004, a solution that will greatly facilitate trade in the region.

The three Exchanges and Member Associations welcome this decision of the CSDs which is described in detail in the separate press release.

Exchanges, invite the other Exchanges of the region to participate in this capital market cooperation and express their willingness to join efforts in order to facilitate cross border transactions, improve the visibility of the region, attract international capital flows, increase members? activity and promote investment opportunities in the region.