Standard & Poor's Announces First S&P 500 Constituents to Participate in Amex Pricing Pilot Program

Standard & Poor's Announces First S&P 500 Constituents to Participate in Amex
Pricing Pilot Program 


NEW YORK, Nov. 3  /PRNewswire/ -- As previously announced on October 8th,
Standard & Poor's, a leading provider of independent investment research,
indices, and ratings will conduct a pilot program in which the S&P 500 will be
calculated using closing prices as determined on the American Stock Exchange
(Amex) for 12 NASDAQ-listed stocks.  This trial period will begin with six
stocks on Monday, December 1, 2003 and continue through early next year.  The
second set of six stocks will be announced in December.  The pilot program will
not affect the intra-day, real-time calculation of the S&P 500.

  The first six stocks to be included in the program are:

   Company Name             Symbol
   Huntington Bancshares    HBAN
   Genzyme Corp.            GENZ
   Starbucks Corp.          SBUX
   Staples Inc.             SPLS
   Altera Corp.             ALTR
   NVIDIA Corp.             NVDA



Standard & Poor's is implementing this pilot program to test if the market
auction system used by the Amex provides better results for index users than the
dealer system used by NASDAQ.

Standard & Poor's will announce before the end of the trial period whether it
will expand the pilot to additional NASDAQ-listed stocks or conclude the pilot
and revert to its current policy of using NASDAQ closing prices for
NASDAQ-listed stocks to determine S&P 500 closing values.

More information about the pilot program, including a Q&A, can be found on the
website http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE:MHP), is the
world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk
evaluation, investment research, data and valuations.  With 5000 employees
located in 20 countries, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's
financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for more than 140 years
in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more
confident about their investment and financial decisions.  For more information,
visit http://www.standardandpoors.com/. 

Lynn Cohn

     Communications Manager

      212-438-1650

     [e-mail]

    (MHP HBAN GENZ SBUX SPLS ALTR NVDA)

DATASOURCE: Standard & Poor's



CONTACT:

David M. Blitzer

Managing Director & Chairman of the Index Committee

([phone]





Web site:  http://www.standardandpoors.com/

http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices 

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