Release: #4003-97

For Release: March 12, 1997

SIX ADDITIONAL COUNTRIES SIGNDECLARATION ON COOPERATION AND SUPERVISION COVERINGINTERNATIONAL FUTURES MARKETS

Boca Raton, Florida -- On the one year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on Cooperation and Supervision of International Futures Exchanges and Clearing Organizations, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced today that six additional international futures regulators had signed the Declaration: the Comissao De Valores Mobiliarios (Brazil), the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, the Hungarian Banking and Capital Markets Supervisor, the Malaysia Securities Commission, the Comissao do Mercado de Valores Mobiliarios (Portugal), and the Financial Supervisory Authority (Sweden).

The additional signatories to the Declaration, originally executed on March 15, 1996, by 14 jurisdictions, bring the total number of signatories to the Declaration to 20. The Declaration and the complementary Memorandum of Understanding and Agreement (MOU), which to date has been signed by 62 international futures exchanges and clearing organizations, constitute multilateral mechanisms for the sharing of information on a bilateral basis between the requesting and requested market authority consistent with their legal and contractual obligations.

The Declaration and the MOU are at the core of developments contemplated in the recommendations and endorsements agreed at a 1995 meeting in Windsor, England whereby the occurrence of certain agreed triggering events affecting an exchange member's financial resources or positions will prompt the sharing of information under the Declaration and/or MOU. The trigger levels are designed to facilitate the identification of large exposures by firms that could have a potentially adverse effect on markets. The need for such information sharing was one of the lessons learned during the 1995 Barings crisis and reinforced in 1996 during events on the copper markets involving the Sumitomo Corporation.

The original signatories to the Declaration include:

United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission

United Kingdom Securities and Investments Board

Australian Securities Commission

Austrian Ministry of Finance

French Commission des Operations de Bourse

Bundesaufsichtsamt Fur den Wertpapierhandel (Germany)

Securities and Futures Authority (Hong Kong)

Central Bank of Ireland

Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa (Italy)

Securities Board of the Netherlands

Commission des valeurs mobilieres du Quebec

Monetary Authority of Singapore

Financial Services Board of South Africa

Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores (Spain)