Boston Options Exchange Joins the Options Industry Council

Chicago—September 9, 2004

The Boston Options Exchange (BOX) has become a member of The Options Industry Council (OIC). BOX joins the other members of OIC (the American Stock Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, International Securities Exchange, Pacific Exchange, Philadelphia Stock Exchange and The Options Clearing Corporation) in helping to promote equity options through education.

"We’re very pleased that BOX is taking part in OIC's educational efforts for current and potential options investors," said Paul Stevens, OIC’s President. "When OIC was founded in 1992, average daily equity options volume was 369,640 contracts. In our first 11 years, we’ve seen a 679 percentage growth in equity options volume and an average daily volume of 4.2 million contracts. We believe this shows our educational successes."

"BOX was launched in February 2004 with an innovative market model that provides investors with diversified ways to trade options," said Ken Leibler, Chairman of the Boston Options Exchange and one of its founding partners. "We are proud to support OIC in their goal of educating investors about the growing options industry."

About OIC

OIC is a non-profit association funded by the American Stock Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, International Securities Exchange, Pacific Exchange, Philadelphia Stock Exchange and The Options Clearing Corporation. OIC’s free resources include: The Options Industry Services call center at 1-888-OPTIONS, an educational website at www.888options.com, evening seminars throughout the continental United States and Canada, educational literature and software.

About BOX

The Boston Options Exchange Group LLC (BOX) was established in February 2002 by Boston Stock Exchange, Inc. (BSE), Bourse de Montréal, Inc., and Interactive Brokers Group LLC. Five additional investors - Credit Suisse First Boston, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS - subsequently joined as BOX partners. BOX is an all-electronic equity derivatives market and was created as an alternative to the existing market models. BOX launched trading in February 2004. For more information, see BOX website: www.bostonoptions.com. Since BOX is an all-electronic options exchange it provides great diversification for the Boston Stock Exchange's core business of equity trading.

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