EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 9 June 2011
CME said that “uncertainty with regard to the regulatory outlook in Washington” was the reason for its shares being down 18% this year. CME said it will also explore the idea of a stock split and that a special dividend has not been ruled out, and that it would look to global partnerships instead of mergers and acquisitions for growth. CME shareholders also approved a 47% pay raise for CEO Craig Donohue to $7.8m. Executive Chairman Terry Duffy told shareholders that the group is exploring alternatives to staying in Illinois after corporate taxes were increased earlier this year. Duffy declined given specific details, but said that even if CME’s headquarters were moved elsewhere, the company could still have a presence in Chicago.
CME Clearing will introduce its clearing service to OTC base metal products in the UK, and it is also considering building its own clearing system. Managing director and president of CME Clearing Kim Taylor noted that there is growing demand for clearing services that allow assets to be kept in the same jurisdiction in which a company is domiciled, and “we will be pursuing a link between our two clearing houses to allow the risk offset to happen”.
LCH.Clearnet’s FX managing director Gavin Wells said that FX options “will be cleared by end of 2012”, and that liquidity risk is the only obstacle preventing FX options from being cleared currently. Wells also stated that “domestic regulators can break their own timelines but I don’t think any of them will dare to break the G-20”, which committed to introducing laws by end-2012 requiring standardized OTC derivatives to be cleared through CCPs and traded on exchanges or electronic platforms.
TSE is facing growing competition from Japan’s third largest venue, Chi-X Japan, which saw a record ADV JPY 21b (US$260m) in May, giving the proprietary trading system (PTS) a 1.97% market share of the Nikkei 225 index stocks. TSE’s May market share in Japanese equities trading was 92.34%, down from 94.9% at the start of 2011.
HKEx will include five additional stock option classes to its synthetic futures offering from June 13, comprising of Agricultural Bank of China: Bank of China; Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; iShares FTSE A50 China Index ETF and PetroChina.
SGX launched trading of Singapore Government Bonds (SGS bonds), which is expected to improve price transparency and liquidity and provide investors with “capital protection and steady returns”. There will be 19 SGS bond issues with maturities of two years or more totally S$74b available for trading, expanding SGX’s current fixed income portfolio from just corporate bonds and preference shares.
DTCC will enhance the data it publishes on US Treasury trade “fails” by providing more detailed data on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, as well as displayed up to a 12 months’ of back data on fail trades.
IDEACarbon appointed Neil Eckert as part of its group of advisors. Eckert was previously the CEO of the Climate Exchange until July 2010, and is currently the Chairman of Trading Emissions Plc, as well as Chairman of Design Technology and Innovation Limited.
Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com