December, as part of its strategy to list securities in offshore hedge funds, its chief executive has announced.

"The thing that's driving the 22-hour trading for us is a new range of products, specifically, hedge funds,'' William Woods, who heads the exchange known as the BSX, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"Right now, hedge funds are not traded on a secondary market basis. We plan to list a range of offshore hedge funds whose securities are listed with a very select group of market makers on the BSX. We believe the product's going to be very hot.'' Trading on the electronic exchange now takes place 10 hours a day, including after-hours cross-trading.

The securities of Bermuda-listed companies are traded on the BSX daily from 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. local time, which is one hour ahead of Eastern time in the United States.

Cross-trading of internationally listed securities on the exchange goes until 7 p.m. daily local time. Since 1998, the BSX has had a cross-trading alliance with Instinet, the largest electronic communications network, or ECN, in the United States. Instinet is a unit of Reuters Group Plc .

"It's scheduled for the first of December, but realistically, it will probably be after Christmas,'' said Woods, who was in New York for the offshore electronic commerce conference. "We're going to 22-hour trading, from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning.'' As for the two hours of down time, "the reason we have to have that gap is the way we're set up. We have to bring the system down'' to complete that day's business and bring it back up to get ready for the next trading day.

The BSX-listed securities of offshore hedge funds will have minimum investment requirements of at least $100,000, or perhaps $250,000, so these issues will be only for investors with very high net worths or institutions, Woods said.

Investors in hedge funds now are faced with a lack of liquidity, he noted.

A hedge fund is a lightly regulated and highly leveraged private investment partnership that offers investors in stocks, bonds or currency extraordinary gains with above-average risk.

"Offshore hedge funds can't be sold in the US, so the nice thing for us is that it's a niche market,'' Woods said.

It's possible, Woods said, the BSX could be in the forefront of the move to round-the-clock trading, noting that plans for evening trading by the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange were pushed back from their original targets.

The NYSE won't consider evening trading until next year.

"We think we're going to be ahead of the curve,'' Woods said.

Woods, a lawyer who worked in Hong Kong before becoming CEO of the Bermuda Stock Exchange in 1995, has pushed the exchange to expand its product offerings and electronic trading systems since taking the helm. So far in 1999, the exchange's total US dollar trading volume exceeds the 1998 total, BSX records show.

In addition to equities, the Bermuda Stock Exchange lists mutual funds, Eurobonds, catastrophe risk and other insurance securitization bonds, asset-backed securities and convertible bonds.

The BSX also operates a mezzanine market, which Woods called "a nursery for Nasdaq,'' to list the securities of developing high-tech companies until they're ready to do an initial public offering on the Nasdaq. The mezzanine stocks are available only to accredited investors with a minimum net worth of $1 million or with at least $100,000 to invest.

Once 22-hour trading is under way at the Bermuda Stock Exchange, Woods said he hoped a link could be established with another electronic communications network, or ECN.

"We've got some interesting discussions going with the ECNs and the broker-dealer community,'' Woods said.

BSX CEO William Woods