CME Clearing House Surpasses One Billion Cleared Trades for 2004

CHICAGO, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME), the largest U.S. futures exchange and largest clearing organization for futures in the world, announced today that it has officially cleared one billion contracts for the calendar year as of the end of trading on Friday, September 24. This is the first time the exchange's clearing house has achieved this milestone. Last year, CME cleared a total of 640 million contracts.

Adding to overall clearing volume this year has been the addition of the Chicago Board of Trade^® (CBOT) as a clearing customer. On January 2, 2004, CME began providing clearing and settlement services for all CBOT products. As a result, CME today clears approximately 85 percent of U.S. futures and options on futures volume.

"Reaching this milestone is significant as electronic trading continues to grow and CME's ability to provide clearing services results in significant efficiencies for our valued customers," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "Our clearing processing agreement with the CBOT has benefited both exchanges, our customers and our clearing firm partners around the world."

"Since we pioneered the concept of electronic futures trading in 1987, CME has been a continued leader in technology innovation, including clearing," said CME Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue. "CME's comprehensive capabilities today -- as well as the products and services we are working to develop for tomorrow -- continue to provide our customers around the world with speed, transparency and market integrity for our benchmark products."

In addition, CME expects trading on GLOBEX^®, CME's electronic trading platform, to surpass one billion electronic trades in late October. GLOBEX was launched in June 1992.

In the month of August, 62 percent of trading volume at CME occurred via electronic trading, an increase from only 15 percent in the year 2000. To date, more than $300 trillion in notional value has been traded and cleared through CME, compared to $333 trillion in 2003.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. ( http://www.cme.com ) is the largest futures exchange in the United States. As an international marketplace, CME brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX^® electronic trading platform. CME offers futures and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. The exchange moved about $1.6 billion per day in settlement payments in the first half of 2004 and managed $39.1 billion in collateral deposits as of June 30, 2004. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CME), which is part of the Russell 1000^® Index.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME, the globe logo and GLOBEX are registered trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. Further information about CME and its products is available on the CME Web site at http://www.cme.com .

SOURCE Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

CONTACT: Media, Anita S. Liskey, +1-312-466-4613, or Allan Schoenberg, +1-312-930-8189, news@cme.com , or Investors, John Peschier, +1-312-930-8491, all of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

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

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Chicago Mercantile Exchange's business which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report or Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year.