As of December 31, 2003, the obligation to purchase common shares amounted to € 2,310 million and represented forward purchase contracts covering approximately 44.3 million Deutsche Bank common shares with a weighted-average strike price of € 52.18 entered into to satisfy obligations under employee share-based compensation awards.
Contracts covering 3.1 million shares mature in less than one year. The remaining contracts covering 41.2 million shares have maturities between one and five years.
The Group entered into forward purchases and sold put options of Deutsche Bank common shares as part of a share buy-back program in 2002. During 2002, 900,000 shares were acquired via exercise of written put options and no written put options were outstanding at December 31, 2002. As of December 31, 2002, forward purchase of € 4.3 millions shares were outstanding. These forward purchase contracts were settled in April 2003 and the shares acquired were accounted for as treasury shares and then retired in May 2003.