The Antitrust Authority has given its assent to the takeover by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) of Borsa Italiana (BIt - the Italian Stock Exchange). The Authority, at its meeting on 3 August 2007, decided that the merger would not have anti-competitive effects.

In the Antitrust Authority's view, in quotation services, trading and information services as well as post-trading, LSE and BIt are at present not really competitors, since their areas of operation tend to be more complementary than overlapping, in terms both of their geographic presence and the content of the services they offer.

Furthermore, LSE has assured the Authority that trading commissions will not be raised as a result of the proposed migration of BIt's services to the TradeElect platform used by LSE, and has contractually specified that BIt's prices will not increase more than the rate of inflation if the quality of the service remains the same. The parties have even spoken of a possible reduction in the cost of trades for investors and businesses because of lower commissions due to efficiency gains linked to economies of scale, as well as cost reductions in trading and quotations from the expected improvement in liquidity.

As for conditions of access to the post-trading facilities controlled by BIt which will pass under LSE's indirect control, the Authority points to the commitments undertaken by Borsa Italiana at the time it acquired control of MTS jointly with Euronext (and confirmed in the recent decision over the acquisition of exclusive control of MTS by BIt), whereby it guaranteed timely access on an equitable, transparent and non-discriminatory basis to the post-trading services offered by Cassa di Compensazione e Garanzia and by Monte Titoli. LSE has declared that the change of ownership of BIt will not affect those commitments.

Rome, 6 August 2007