INET ATS Routing Changes Made to the Sterling Trader® System – April 18, 2005

In view of routing changes made by INET ATS and announced on April 18, 2005 (see the link at http://www.inetats.com/subscribers/emailarchive/2005/20050303a.asp), Sterling Technologies Inc. is announcing the following internal routing changes to support those changes made to the INET ATS FIX connection:

1) New Destination code ‘INET’ to replace ‘ISLD’: Effective April 18, 2005, Sterling Technologies Inc. has introduced a new destination called ‘INET’ which will route orders to INET ATS. This new destination code of ‘INET’ is the equivalent of the currently existing code ‘ISLD’. Orders currently sent to either destination code – ‘ISLD’ or ‘INET’ – will be routed to the single destination of INET ATS. On May 31, 2005 the redundant destination code of ‘ISLD’ will be retired; at that time, the ‘INET’ destination code will become the only destination code for INET ATS.

In anticipation of the retirement of the destination code ‘ISLD’, Sterling users are strongly urged to change the default settings in their Sterling Trader® Pro layouts and configurations, for instance by adjusting their ‘Hot Key’ settings and their default ‘Global and Local Order Entry Settings’ so as to replace entries pointing to destination ‘ISLD’ to point exclusively at destination ‘INET’.

2) Routing destination code ‘INCA’ remains in effect, and will continue to be available to all traders who access the Instinet Crossing Network directly through their broker.

For those Sterling users who do not access Instinet’s Crossing Network directly through their broker, yet are still using the destination code of ‘INCA’, their orders will continue be routed to the single destination INET ATS until May 31, 2005. At that time the destination code ‘INCA’ will no longer be used by Sterling for routing orders to INET ATS. Instead, the ‘INET’ destination code will become the only destination code for INET ATS to be used by Sterling; these Sterling users will by then have to change their default settings to ‘INET’.

3) Effective Monday, April 18, 2005, Instinet’s SmartRouter is no longer offered as a service of INET ATS. INET has developed RASH (Routing and Special Handling) as its own intelligent routing system. RASH is now available for immediate use through Sterling. The RASH strategies supported by Sterling are ‘DOTI’, ‘DOTA’, and ‘STGY’; each can be accessed by using the ‘Preference’ field within the Order Entry function in Sterling.

To find out more about INET’s RASH system, please refer to the following technical documentation available from the following link on the INET ATS website:

http://www.inetats.com/support/devspecs/rash/index.asp.