This is part of OMX Exchanges' efforts to strengthen confidence in its activities and will entail that surveillance matters will be separated to an even greater extent than today from the exchanges' business operations.

The duties of the new surveillance committees will be to exclusively focus on listing and surveillance matters in the Stockholm and Helsinki markets. This will primarily involve matters pertaining to the exchange rules of listed companies and the surveillance of companies and exchange members, as well as matters involving the surveillance functions' budget. As a result of the new structure, each of the surveillance functions will be responsible for deciding whether matters are to be referred to the exchanges' disciplinary committees.

The two surveillance committees will comprise a majority of members with an independent status including chairmen, which will be recruited outside the exchanges as well as the major owners of the exchanges. The members, who are the same in both committees, should have excellent working knowledge of both the Swedish and the Finnish securities market. The surveillance committees will be independent of the Boards of Directors of OMX Exchanges, the Stockholm Stock Exchange and the Helsinki Stock Exchange. The long term plan is that the Copenhagen Stock Exchange also will have a surveillance committee.

"As a result of the introduction of surveillance committees, it will become even clearer that matters involving listing on the exchanges and surveillance are being handled independently from the exchanges' business operations. We regard actions that generate confidence in the stock market as extremely important. High confidence in exchange operations also results in increased interest among investors and facilitates the listed companies' efforts to acquire risk capital," says Jukka Ruuska, President of OMX Exchanges.

OMX Exchanges' principles for neutrality and equal treatment

The Stockholm Stock Exchange and the Helsinki Stock Exchange observe two fundamental principles in their surveillance activities, namely adopting a neutral approach to admitting new companies and new members (neutrality principle) and treating all companies and members equally, regardless of size or their importance to share trading (equal treatment principle). The fact that the exchanges conduct profit-generating operations and receive most of their revenues from these two customer categories makes maintaining these principles particularly important.