Thomson TradeWeb and SwapsWire announce integration facilitating real-time confirmation of Interest Rate OTC derivative transactions

London/Jersey City, 03/01/2006, Thomson TradeWeb, the leading online marketplace for fixed income securities and OTC derivatives, and a unit of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC, TSX: TOC), today announced a landmark integration with SwapsWire, an industry backed electronic confirmation system for OTC derivatives.

This innovative integration will allow customers and dealers to trade interest rate derivatives on TradeWeb, and then seamlessly confirm the transactions electronically on SwapsWire. The integration also allows clients to access the SwapsWire application from the TradeWeb viewer, facilitating the use of both platforms by middle and back offices.

With this functionality, both customers and dealers alike will be able to significantly reduce their operational risk and costs and also improve their post-trade processing capabilities in line with recent industry initiatives.

TradeWeb launched its interest rate swap platform in Europe in February 2005 and in the United States in September 2005. Since launch, TradeWeb has seen tremendous growth in the electronic trading of interest rate swaps, both in terms of participation and liquidity. Trading volumes are expanding month-on-month, and to date, approximately 75% of global trading volume is executed in trades of over €100m/$100m in size. TradeWeb now provides over 175 clients with access to a growing pool of liquidity provided by 10 dealers worldwide.

"This innovation with SwapsWire addresses client and dealer demand for more flexible STP solutions in this rapidly expanding and changing market. As we continue to expand our derivatives product capabilities, the need to advance post-trade processing is critical and this interface ensures we will be able to meet market expectations", commented Lee Olesky, President of Thomson TradeWeb.

Chip Carver, CEO of SwapsWire added: "The real-time integration of TradeWeb and SwapsWire creates a powerful combination that meets the stated needs of our buy and sell-side clients in the rapidly changing OTC derivatives market"

Jan Kloosterboer, Head of Euro Swaps Trading at ABN AMRO commented: "The TradeWeb/SwapsWire STP functionality will provide ABN AMRO and its clients with an increased level of efficiency from all electronic interest rate swap trades"

Elie El Hayek, Head of Rates, Europe at HSBC added: "Our ability to offer a full STP process enhances the quality of our service to HSBC customers, reducing costs, reducing booking errors and eliminating delay. HSBC’s aim is to be one of the top IRS dealers in TradeWeb and participation in SwapsWire is another important factor to achieve this goal"

Michael Davie, Chief Operating Officer for European Credit and Rates at JPMorgan London said: "This initiative is a key enabler for full STP of ecommerce transactions in the interest rate derivatives market. JPMorgan’s clients will now be able to leverage the industry standard SwapsWire platform to perform trade affirmation and other post-trade activities on electronically executed transactions. JPMorgan is delighted to continue to partner with TradeWeb and SwapsWire in providing a full and effective ecommerce solution to the market which will bring significant benefit to our clients and the dealer community"


About Thomson TradeWeb:

TradeWeb is the leading online fixed-income trading network with over 9 million trades executed and total volume surpassing $110 trillion since its inception in 1998. TradeWeb’s multi-dealer auction model now links 37 of the world’s leading fixed-income dealers with more than 2,200 buy-side institutions in Europe, North America and Asia. Over $200 billion in trading volume gets executed over TradeWeb each day.

The business is also the leading electronic ’straight-through processing’ network for the fixed-income markets, providing dealers and buy-side institutions with paperless trade allocations and confirmations on its fully integrated TradeXpress network. TradeWeb’s STP network also includes AccountNet, the leading standard settlement instructions database and first counterparty management tool for the dealer-to-customer interest rate derivatives online marketplace. TradeWeb is also the leading innovator in the institutional fixed-income markets for best execution and compliance measurement and benchmarking.

Thomson TradeWeb operates within the Thomson Financial group of businesses. TradeWeb LLC is a member of the NASD. TradeWeb Europe Limited is authorised and regulated by the U.K. FSA.



About Thomson Financial:

Thomson Financial is a US$1.73 billion provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. Through the widest range of products and services in the industry, Thomson Financial helps clients in more than 70 countries make better decisions, be more productive and achieve superior results. Thomson Financial is part of The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to more than 20 million business and professional customers in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate e-learning and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With revenues of US$8.10 billion, The Thomson Corporation lists its common shares on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

About SwapsWire:

The SwapsWire system, which has been operating since 2002, automates legal confirmation, trade capture, and broker confirmation for multiple OTC derivatives products including interest rate swaps, forward rate agreements, overnight index swaps, caps, floors, swaptions, credit default swaps and equity options. The system is being used at hundreds of sell-side, buy-side, and inter-dealer broker sites in Europe, Asia and the USA. SwapsWire was winner of the Risk Awards 2005, Technology Platform.

SwapsWire is owned by a consortium of 21 leading derivatives dealers: Bank of America, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., Barclays Bank, Bayerische Hypo-und Vereinsbank, BNP Paribas, Calyon, Citigroup, CDC Ixis Capital Markets, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank Plc, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Mizuho Capital Markets, Morgan Stanley, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Societe Generale, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and UBS Investment Bank. For more information on SwapsWire, visit www.swapswire.com

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Simon Hylson-Smith

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Thomson TradeWeb

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