On January 29th, in SPAN Advisory #04-03, we announced that after March 26th, CME-CBOT SPAN files will be available only in the "expanded-unpacked" format.  The original "packed" and "unpacked" formats will no longer be published.

We have pushed this date back by two weeks, but beginning on Monday April 12th,publication of the old "packed" and "unpacked" formats will be discontinued, and combined CBOT-CME SPAN files will be available only in the expanded-unpacked format and in the XML format.

In other words, the ".par" and ".pck" SPAN files will no longer be published on eitherftp.cme.com or on the Firm FTP Server.

Expanded-unpacked format SPAN files for CBOT-CME are available:

• On the Firm FTP Server, in the pub/span directory, and
• On the Internet, at ftp.cme.com, in the pub/span/data/ccl directory.

The end-of-day expanded-unpacked format SPAN file is available as ccl.s.pa2 (ccl for CBOT-CME Common Clearing Link), s for end-of-day settlement, and pa2 to identify the expanded-unpacked format.  The file is also available zipped as ccl.s.pa2.zip, and with the business date in the filename, for example, ccl.20040127.s.pa2.zip.  The analogous "early" settlement file has an e instead of an s in the filename.

SPAN file formats are available atwww.cme-ch.com/span.

For more information, please contact the Risk Department at 312-648-3888.