The Proposed treatment of the Standard Bank Corporate Action in the FTSE/JSE Indices

11 December 2007

Further to the announcement of the scheme of arrangement between Standard Bank Group and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) first quarter 2008, FTSE/JSE would like to clarify that this corporate event will be treated as a mandatory offer as detailed in the ICA that was published on the 18th of April 2006. Please see Appendix A below for your perusal. The scheme of arrangement will include a specific issue of shares for cash to ICBC. When details and dates are confirmed and approved a further ICA will be published to their effect to the FTSE/JSE Indices.



APPENDIX A:

A decision has been reached after considering feedback received from the investment community and extensive deliberations with the FTSE/JSE Advisory Committee and FTSE. FTSE/JSE will adjust for mandatory offers according to the formula below:
• the expected opening share price on the ex date will be

Expected Open = [ Closing Price – (Offer percentage * Offer Price) ] / (1 – Offer Percentage)

• the price adjustment will be Expected Open – Closing price

Below is an example of how this will be implemented in the indices.

Let us say 32% of a company’s shares are bought back at a fixed price of 8 200 cents, and the market closes on 8 700 cents at close before the ex date. The Expected Open, also referred to as the Adjusted Close, as per the above formula is thus 8 935 cents. The values are illustrated in the table below:

	Shares	Price (in Cents)	Value
Portfolio at Close	100	8700	8700
Bought Back	32	8200	2624
Remaining shares	68	8935	6076

This will result in an adjustment of 235 cents (= 8700 – 8935).

The following points are worth noting :

• This treatment will only apply to mandatory offers as per the definition above, conditional offers will not qualify.

• The normal free float and shares in issue updates still apply as per the current ground rules.

• This treatment will apply with immediate effect, however the previous mandatory offers will not be adjusted for and hence no history will be calculated.