ANALYSIS: Euronext eyes repo, futures deliveries after first milestone

Euronext, which operates exchanges in seven European countries including France, Italy and the Netherlands, completed last month the launch of its Repo Foundation, the first of two stages in the group’s ambitious repo plan.

Anthony Attia, Euronext’s global head of derivatives and post-trade, told FOW: “We are preparing our expansion in European repo clearing which started with the launch of the Repo Foundation milestone in June.”

Euronext’s acquisition of Borsa Italiana in April 2021 for €4.4bn (£3.8bn) included Italian clearing house CC&G, which clears about three-quarters of the Italian repo market.

That trade paved the way for Euronext’s development of CC&G into Euronext Clearing, the firm’s inhouse clearing service that has enabled the current push into new products.

Attia said: “Building on our leading Italian repo clearing franchise, we expanded our product scope to the clearing of repos on Irish, Portuguese and Spanish sovereign bonds in June 2025 before adding repos on German, French, Dutch, Belgian and Euro sovereign bonds in the third quarter of this year, and repos on Austrian and Finnish sovereign bonds shortly after, in December of this year.”

The European repo market is currently dominated by LCH, the London-based clearing house owned by the LSE Group, and Eurex Clearing, the Frankfurt-based service run by Deutsche Boerse.

Attia continued: “Repo Foundation also enabled the go-live of our partnership with Euroclear as triparty agent for collateral management, which will be followed by Clearstream in November 2025, and by the connexion to leading repo trading platforms early in the first quarter of 2026.”

Euronext cut in June a deal with Clearstream to support the repo expansion, which was interesting as Clearstream is part of Deutsche Boerse, the owner of Eurex.

The second stage of the Euronext repo plan is called Repo Expansion which Attia said “will involve the delivery of sponsored access aimed at buy-side firms who want to benefit from clearing, and the development of new products”.

Repo is only one part of Euronext’s strategy however, with the European group also planning interest rate futures and an expansion into European power derivatives, Attia said.

“Separately, we are working towards the launch of our first interest rate futures on September 22. The support from the market has been encouraging and we are confident of at least 30 members live by launch as well as key retail brokers, market-makers and the Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).”

Euronext’s mini-interest rate futures will also line the group up against Eurex, the dominant European government bond futures trading venue.

Frankfurt-based Eurex is the largest Euro long-term interest rate futures and options market which traded in May 68 million lots, according to FOW Data.

The last piece of the strategy is Euronext’s move into European power, which is currently dominated by European Energy Exchange, also part of Deutsche Boerse.

Euronext announced in January a deal to acquire Nasdaq’s Nordic power futures arm less than eight months after EEX dropped its bid to buy the business.

Attia said: “We are on track with our derivatives plans which includes the acquisition of the Nasdaq Nordic power futures business and the migration of the open interest to Euronext Clearing in the first half of 2026.”

He added: “The primary challenge is managing the migration of the open interest while we also plan to launch our own Nordic power futures shortly before the completion of the migration.”