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2009 spelt retrenchment for the world’s established futures exchanges – but a commodities boom eased the pain. Tom Osborn picks out the bright spots from the laggards in the global recovery.
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Knight Capital Group, the leading US equity broker, has continued its expansion into derivatives by hiring Adam Templeton and Ryan Sylvester from Newedge as co-heads of strategic options.
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Bankers support a global tax on banking? Next you’ll be saying turkeys are voting for Christmas. But that was the headline on Davos – and no wonder.
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As China prepares for the launch of equity index futures, the authorities are taking a careful approach to reform, argues Dean Owen, chief China representative at futures broker Newedge.
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The Bahrain Financial Exchange has appointed Salah Al Abdulla as its chief corporate officer ahead of its launch.
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Nicholas Bertrand started on January 1 as head of EDX London, the derivatives arm of the London Stock Exchange. His promotion followed the decision by Lee Betsill to leave the exchange.
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The board of the Chicago Board Options Exchange approved in mid-December a proposal to pursue demutualisation followed by an immediate initial public offering. The US equity options exchange hopes to complete the process by the end of the second quarter 2010.
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The Chicago Board Options Exchange will delay the launch of its new C2 options exchange platform until the second half of the year, until the US Securities and Exchange Commission has completed its review of flash trading.
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The battle in US Treasury futures trading between Chicago Mercantile Exchange and its start-up rival ELX Futures has intensified with the simultaneous launch of futures on ultra-long bonds (with maturities greater than 25 years) on both exchanges
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Tech firm Corvil has published research on new methodologies for measuring latency under its Corvil Expected Quality and Corvil Expected Bandwidth programmes.
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Two senior figures at Creditex, the interdealer broker and trading platform for credit default swaps that Intercontinental Exchange bought in September 2008, are to leave.
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Deutsche Börse has signed a cooperation agreement with the People’s Bank of China to help set up a new interbank clearing house for over-the-counter derivatives.
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s long-awaited announcement on January 14 of a new policy on controlling energy speculation was greeted in the market with quiet relief and satisfaction.
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The Futures and Options Association formed a new advocacy body in January, the FOA European Industry Council, to lobby regulators and politicians.
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GFI Group, the interdealer broker, has set up a team in New York working on carbon and emissions trading. Known as the GFI Environmental Products Group, it will originate, commercialise and trade secondary market credits.
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The London Metal Exchange will merge its Mediterranean and Far Eastern Steel Billet Futures, to create what it calls the first global, physically delivered steel futures contract.
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The London Stock Exchange’s plans to launch a rival to Liffe’s futures and options on the FTSE 100 index have been cautiously welcomed by market participants.
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CME Group has appointed Otto Nägeli as chairman-designate of CME Clearing Europe. He is a former head of Switzerland’s Soffex exchange, director of Eurex and CEO of the European Energy Exchange.
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Singapore Exchange introduced a new derivatives clearing system, SGXClear, in December.
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Kim Bongsoo took over as chairman and chief executive of the Korea Exchange on December 30, for a fixed three year term.
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Garry O’Connor has taken over from Chris Edmonds as chief executive of the International Derivatives Clearing Group, the new clearing service for interest rate swaps, majority-owned by the Nasdaq OMX Group.
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Claude Cyr, first vice-president and head of global services and relationships management at Newedge Canada, started on December 21 as senior vice-president of financial markets at the Montreal Exchange.
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RealTick’s cross-asset electronic trading platform has integrated the latest suite of global equity algorithms and futures execution capabilities from Deutsche Bank.
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Singapore Mercantile Exchange, the fledgling commodities bourse, received in-principle regulatory clearance from the Singaporean markets regulator in early December. It hopes to begin trading in the first quarter. The bourse, which completed go-live testing in October, had hoped to launch before the end of 2009
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Newedge, the derivatives and securities brokerage, has appointed Laurent Cunin as head of its Asia Pacific operations, based in Hong Kong.
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Gauging how many derivatives staff lost their jobs in the financial crisis and what effect that had on pay is not easy. Some segments of the market have remained bullish, however, as Hugo Cox discovers.
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Trading Technologies International and Mizuho Securities USA have agreed to expand their global relationship, so as to co-market TT’s high speed X_Trader platform.
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US futures commission merchants will be able to use SunGard’s one-stop GMI platform to process and clear trades on BM&F Bovespa, the Brazilian stock and derivatives exchange, from the second quarter this year. The GMI system also helps with post-trade accounting.
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Nasdaq OMX is unlikely to be too concerned by losing its stake in Nasdaq Dubai, a senior exchange analyst has told FOW.
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The Hong Kong Exchange is working with index companies to develop a volatility index for its securities market. It will be based on stock index options prices, with the aim of providing a benchmark of volatility for the marketplace. The project is at an early stage, HKEx said.
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The London Metal Exchange (LME) has made a formal proposal to the Baltic Exchange to establish a new exchange platform for forward freight agreements (FFAs).
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SunGard has launched a new clearing gateway for the London Metal Exchange.
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Romania’s Sibiu Monetary Financial and Commodities Exchange (Sibex) has begun using Trayport’s Exchange Trading System for the trading of single stock, interest rate, currency and gold futures and options.
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Nasdaq OMX has said it has finalised a deal to secure an 85% stake in the over-the-counter derivatives exchange Agora X.
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Deutsche Börse Group, operator of Eurex and International Securities Exchange, is bringing in US management consultancy McKinsey for large scale restructuring, a person familiar with the matter has told Futures and Options World.
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The New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) is confident that its whole milk powder future will establish itself as a global benchmark because it is not US centric, unlike the rival CME Group contract.
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The London Metal Exchange (LME) has withdrawn its polypropylene and linear low density polyethylene plastics contracts from ring trading.
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BM&FBovespa and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop a multi-asset class trading platform.
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With the launch of Singapore Exchange’s Fuel Oil Futures just days away, market participants have told Futures and Options Intelligence that the Asian bourse could succeed where two others have tried and failed.
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Options traders might be about to draw a line under 25 years of confusion with the imminent completion of the Symbology switch-over on Friday February 12.
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Interdealer broker Tullett Prebon has launched a new over-the-counter brokerage firm in Japan for equity derivatives.
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Market participants are unenthusiastic about the recommendations of the UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee’s report, which was released yesterday (February 8).
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RJ O’Brien, the largest independent futures broker in the US, has won regulatory permission to launch its first subsidiary in Canada.
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Every year, people live longer. That may sound nice, but it’s a big problem for the financial industry, especially pensions providers. Firms would love to be able to trade and hedge longevity risk, but there have been few practical solutions – until now.
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Intense work is going on towards a new edition of the ISDA standard definitions for OTC equity derivatives. Sapient's Nick Fry and Ed Osbaldestin urge the market to do better than the last time.