Memo to: Prospective Steel Benchmark Price Opinion Providers From:

Memo to: Prospective Steel Benchmark Price Opinion Providers

From: Peter F. Marcus, Managing Partner, World Steel Dynamics
Bob Jones, Editor in Chief, Metal Bulletin
Martin Abbott, Publisher, Metal Bulletin and American Metal Market

TMRe: SteelBenchmarker Proposal

Date: March 13, 2006



Dear WSD and MB/AMM subscribers and friends:

World Steel Dynamics and Metal Bulletin/American Metal Market have pooled their resources
to jointly create and sustain a global steel benchmark pricing system we call the
TMSteelBenchmarker . We expect that our steel benchmark prices:

• By the end of 2006 will be trusted by steel buyers and sellers the world over.
Those involved in the steel market will find the benchmark prices to be accurate,
timely and indispensable, in some cases, when settling physical contracts. The
benchmark prices will be believable in part because they are the same products as the
generic ones discussed day in and day out by buyers and sellers when they are
“discovering” the price in effect that day.

• Starting in late 2006 or 2007 will become the underpinning for an extraordinary
surge in the trading of financial instruments that permit the hedging of the steel
price risk. Steel financial transactions – i.e., those with no physical delivery – will
occur on an exchange such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), London
Metal Exchange (LME), the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and on an ...