News Release

SIPC PRESIDENT SIGNS COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT WITH TAIWAN COUNTERPART, MEETS OTHER INVESTOR COMPENSATION GROUPS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – June 15, 2006 – The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) announced today that it entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on June 2nd with the Securities and Futures Investor Protection Center (SFIPC) of Taiwan in order to better protect investors in the event of a brokerage firm failure in both the U.S. and Taiwan.

The presidents of the two groups signed the MOU in Taipei. SIPC was created by Congress to maintain a special reserve fund to help investors at bankrupt brokerage firms.

SIPC President Stephen Harbeck said that the two organizations began work on the agreement last year during a conference in Taipei sponsored by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

Harbeck said: "We are planning for an event we hope never occurs: the failure of a major brokerage firm that has offices and customers in both Taiwan and the United States. We now have a framework to plan, communicate, and cooperate in the event of such a financial failure."

SFIPC President Tsai-Hung Chen visited Washington twice to work out the details of the document.

SIPC already has similar MOUS in place with its counterparts in the United Kingdom and Canada.

After the signing ceremony in Taipei, Harbeck gave a presentation on June 6 to an Investor Compensation Fund Regulators meeting sponsored by the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong. Representatives from Canada, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Malaysia were in attendance. The participants exchanged information about the various protection programs available to investors in each venue, and how those protections differed from each other.

Harbeck said: "The more each Investor Compensation Fund learns about similar organizations around the world, the faster we will be able to sort out the inevitable jurisdictional problems which will arise in a financial crisis. The time to do so is before a crisis, not during a financial meltdown. SIPC hopes to replicate the Memorandum of Understanding process across the globe."

ABOUT SIPC

From the time Congress created it in 1970 through December 2005, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (http://www.sipc.org) has advanced $585 million in order to make possible the recovery of $14.2 billion in assets for an estimated 624,000 investors. Although not every investor is protected by SIPC, SIPC estimates that no fewer than 99 percent of persons who are eligible have been made whole in the failed brokerage firm cases that it has handled to date.

SIPC either acts as trustee or works with an independent court-appointed trustee in a fraud case to recover funds. The statute that created SIPC rules provides that customers of a failed brokerage firm receive all non-negotiable securities that are already registered in their names or in the process of being registered. At the same time, funds from the SIPC reserve are available to satisfy the remaining claims of each customer up to a maximum of $500,000. This figure includes a maximum of $100,000 on claims for cash.

CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, The Hastings Group, (703) 276-3265 or aaaron@hastingsgroup.com.

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