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  1. Point in time
    2006-04-05

COB 5 Annex 2 Dealing in securities which may be subject to stabilisation (E)

E

This statement complies with the rules of the Financial Services Authority (FSA)

[Name of Firm] or its representatives may, from time to time, recommend transactions in securities to you, or carry out such transactions on your behalf, where the price may have been influenced by measures taken to stabilise it.

You should read the explanation below carefully. This is designed to help you judge whether you wish your funds to be invested at all in such securities and, if you do, whether you wish:

(1) to be consulted before [Name of Firm] carries out any such transaction on your behalf; or

(2) to authorise [Name of Firm] to carry out any such transaction on your behalf without first having to consult you.

What is stabilisation?

Stabilisation enables the market price of a security to be maintained artificially during the period when a new issue of securities is sold to the public. Stabilisation may affect not only the price of the new issue but also the price of other securities relating to it.

The FSA allows stabilisation in order to help counter the fact that, when a new issue comes onto the market for the first time, the price can sometimes drop for a time before buyers are found.

Stabilisation is being carried out by a 'stabilisation manager' (normally the firm chiefly responsible for bringing a new issue to market). As long as the stabilising manager follows a strict set of rules, he is entitled to buy back securities that were previously sold to investors or allotted to institutions which have decided not to keep them. The effect of this may be to keep the price at a higher level than it would otherwise be during the period of stabilisation.

The Stabilisation Rules:

(1) limit the period when a stabilising manager may stabilise a new issue;

(2) fix the price at which he may stabilise (in the case of shares and warrants but not bonds); and

(3) require him to disclose that he may be stabilising but not that he is actually doing so.

The fact that a new issue or a related security is being stabilised should not be taken as any indication of the level of interest from investors, nor of the price at which they are prepared to buy the securities.