The members of CCP12 – the Global Association of Central Counterparties elected the new Chair, two Vice-Chairs and Ordinary Executive Committee Members at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on May, 8 th 2013. The world’s major providers of central counterparty (CCP) services held their 2013 AGM in Busan, South Korea, hosted by KRX (The Korea Exchange).

Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) held a meeting with the custodian members to discuss the developments targeting the implementation of a new enhancement of Delivery Versus Payment (DvP) process which the Abu Dhabi exchange plans to put into operation from the trading date of May 5^th, 2013.

• New Central Counterparty solution further boosts post-trade efficiency
• Market participants benefit from optimised processes and new software
• Technology partnership with London Stock Exchange Group

Safcom, the clearing house for the JSE’s derivatives market, announced the promulgation of the rules enabling the establishment of a default fund intended to add another layer of investor protection in the exchange traded derivative market.

Clearstream will launch its direct settlement link to the Russian market following the opening of a main account at the National Settlement Depository (NSD), the new Russian CSD, in February 2013. The move follows months of progress through technical, legal and regulatory steps in close cooperation with the NSD. The new direct link to the Russian CSD will complement Clearstream’s existing settlement services by further opening up access to the Russian capital markets via an efficient channel and offering a single access point, the Russian CSD. Leveraging its extensive post-trade infrastructure, Clearstream will offer a robust multi-channel access to the new Russian CSD via both its central securities depository (CSD) and its international central securities depository (ICSD).
 

Clearstream and Belfius have agreed to develop exclusively a new collateral management activity for bilateral trades, focusing on over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and aimed primarily at corporates and medium-sized banks. The service, which will leverage Belfius’ specialist experience, will be white-labelled by Clearstream and offered to its clients.

IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of global markets and clearing houses, announced that ICE Clear Credit, the largest North American credit default swap (CDS) clearing house, has received regulatory approval to provide portfolio margining relief for buy-side clearing of CDS.

NASDAQ OMX Nordic announced the clearing of SEK denominated interest rate swaps for end client trades in the Nordic market in February 2013. This will provide the entire market with a clearing solution for standardized SEK denominated interest rate swaps. Since November 2011 clearing has been available for the trades between participating members only, while NASDAQ OMX and the Nordic member community have negotiated the legal and technical framework for a successful introduction of interest rate swaps clearing for end client trades.

Interbolsa, a subsidiary of NYSE Euronext and the Central Securities Depository (CSD) for the Portuguese market, announced that it has become the CSD for Portuguese Treasury Bills. Interbolsa will be responsible for ensuring not only the registration and control of the Treasury Bills but also the settlement of transactions.

Clearstream has established a branch in Dublin to extend its post-trade offering in the area of investment funds to hedge funds. Clearstream Banking S.A., Dublin Branch, will extend the company’s investment funds business to alternative funds and allow Clearstream to service the entire range of funds: mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and hedge funds. The hedge fund investor services were set up following a steep increase in client demand for such investments and will over time be fully integrated into Clearstream’s fund processing environment. The new venture has already signed six pilot customers. Christian Westerholt, previously Head of Product Development in Clearstream’s Investment Fund Services area, will be the General Manager of the Dublin branch.
 

Clearstream is ready to take the necessary steps to open a direct account with National Settlement Depository (NSD), the new Russian central securities depository (CSD) in Moscow. The link signals a significant improvement in the way Clearstream’s customers will be able to access the market and follows yesterday’s announcement by Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS) that NSD has been granted CSD status. The creation of this new market entity forms a crucial part of the overall reconstruction of the securities market infrastructure in Russia. It should be able to deliver a substantial contribution to the government’s stated aim of developing Moscow as an international financial centre.

Moscow Exchange Group is pleased to announce that the Russian financial markets regulator Federal Financial Markets Service has granted the Group's subsidiary National Settlement Depository (NSD) status as the country's Central Securities Depository (CSD). The establishment of a CSD is a landmark development in the Russian capital markets and will increase transparency in respect of securities ownership, improve efficiency, and give international investors easier access to Russian securities.

Bursa Malaysia completes the final phase of its CDS Straight Through Processing (CDS-STP) initiative for its market participants. This phase complements the earlier initiatives under CDS-STP to provide CDS balances and intraday updates to shareholding positions in CDS accounts, introduced on 18 June 2012 and 13 August 2012. 

IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of global regulated futures exchanges, clearing houses and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, announced that the CFTC has approved ICE Clear Europe's request to allow the clearing house and its clearing members to hold both U.S. energy futures and foreign energy futures in the 4d(a) account for U.S. customers. The 4d(a) Order allows ICE to continue offering portfolio margining offsets for its energy customers, but with enhanced account segregation benefits.

Euroclear UK & Ireland (EUI) has cut its investment fund order-routing fees for both high- and low-volume clients with immediate effect. The tariff for 10,000 or more orders per year has been cut by 9%, rising to a reduction of 33% for clients routing over 25,000 orders per year through the EMX Message System.

NYSE Euronext (NYX) confirmed that its London derivatives market, LIFFE Administration and Management (LIFFE) has now given formal notice of termination with respect to the services currently received from LCH.Clearnet Ltd under the Clearing Relationship Agreement to support NYSE Liffe Clearing, NYX’s London-based derivatives clearing service.

The SIX Board of Directors agreed to sign the ECB’s Framework Agreement concerning Europe’s envisaged centralized settlement platform. In signing the agreement, SIX, through SIX Securities Services, will become the first non-EU central securities depository to offer access to the TARGET2-Securities (T2S) platform.

CME Group announced that on April 27 the company cleared its first customer FX Over-the-Counter Non Deliverable Forward (NDF) trade, further expanding the company's market leading OTC solution across multiple asset classes. The currency cleared was the Brazilian Real. The company also offers NDF clearing for the Chinese Renminbi Yuan, Philippine Peso, Malaysian Ringgit, Indian Rupee, Korean Won, Taiwan Dollar, Chilean Peso, Colombian Peso, Peruvian Sol, Russian Ruble and Indonesian Rupiah.

Eurex Clearing and Pirum Systems sign Connectivity Agreement to facilitate access to Eurex Clearing’s Lending CCP/ Market participants will be able to leverage Pirum’s automation platform to transmit bilaterally negotiated transactions to Eurex Clearing

LCH.Clearnet Group Limited ("LCH.Clearnet") notes the announcement by NYSE Euronext regarding its European clearing strategy. LCH.Clearnet confirms that it has held constructive preliminary discussions with NYSE Euronext regarding its current intentions with respect to the clearing arrangements of its cash equities and derivatives businesses.

* Promoting the use of investment funds as collateral
* Use of investment funds could bring 700 billion of additional collateral to the market

The clearing arm of SIX Securities Services, SIX x-clear Ltd, todayannounced that its fully interoperable clearing and risk management services are now available on Turquoise. With this step, the highly recognized clearing house continues its rapid European expansion after becoming interoperable on BATS and Chi-X earlier this year.

LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet), New York Portfolio Clearing LLC (NYPC), The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and NYSE Euronext (NYX) jointly announced that they have agreed to explore expanding the existing combined “one-pot” cross-margining arrangement to include interest rate swaps cleared by LCH.Clearnet.

Canadian financial institutions are set to benefit from a new efficient and effective collateral management service planned for development by Clearstream and CDS Clearing and Depository Services Inc. (CDS). The two companies signed a letter of intent last week and will now move forward in exploring the creation of a new triparty collateral management service for Canada. The service would enable Canadian market participants to meet demands for collateral in the most cost effective and operationally efficient way possible: CDS, the Canadian central securities depository, would utilise Clearstream’s collateral management infrastructure and the Liquidity Hub GO service to allocate, optimise and substitute domestically held collateral on a fully automated basis and in real time.

Eurex Repo, Eurex Clearing and Clearstream, all part of Deutsche Boerse Group, will introduce an extension of the integrated and innovative GC Pooling market for secured funding which will be made available for active GC Pooling participants (banks) to further strengthen their service scope towards corporate customers. Launch is scheduled for Q4 2012. The leading GC Pooling marketplace for secured interbank transactions will be enhanced to contribute to re-building trust between banks and their existing non-financial customers, e.g. corporates, asset managers and pension funds. The new market segment GC Pooling Select will be specifically designed for secured short-term cash investments from non-financial clients to banks to avoid the systemic risks of unsecured money market operations.

Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Berhad (BMD) has launched a new derivatives clearing and settlement system to provide faster and more efficient clearing and settlement services for its Clearing Participants.

CME Group announced it has expanded its centrally cleared, over-the-counter (OTC) agricultural swap offering through the introduction of eight new grain and oilseed swaps. The new swaps will be available for clearing on February 13, pending regulatory review. Among the offering are five new bullet swaps and three additional calendar swaps, which are listed with, and subject to, the rules and regulations of CBOT.

IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE) announced that ICE Clear Credit now offers portfolio margining benefits for clearing participants' proprietary positions, allowing for more efficient collateralization of opposite positions in index and correlated single-name credit default swap (CDS) instruments.

The revised Clearing Fund of TWSE and GTSM (Gretai Securities Market) is effective from Jan 1 of 2012. The required contribution of securities firms is cut to NT$3.4 bn. from NT$5 bn. on the TWSE, and to NT1.6 bn. from NT$2.4 bn. on the GTSM.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced that the Mortgage-Backed Securities Division (MBSD) of its Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) subsidiary has filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to provide central counterparty (CCP) and pool netting services for trades in U.S. mortgage-backed securities. This initiative is designed to reduce the risks and costs associated with trading in the $100 trillion-a-year market.

LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet) announced that it has gone live with significant enhancements to its SwapClear service. Following extensive consultation with the buy side and Futures Commission Merchants, SwapClear now accepts a broader range of collateral for initial margin and offers increased connectivity and variable notional swaps. In addition, the platform offers risk-free compression and flexible trade submission and is now directly accessible via TradeWeb and Bloomberg (VCON and Electronic Trading) through SwapClear’s ClearLink API in addition to MarkitSERV.

Singapore Exchange’s (SGX) AsiaClear service will clear more varieties of over-the-counter coal and naphtha swaps from next month.

BM&FBOVESPA signed an exclusive contract with Swedish technology company Cinnober on October 21, 2011 for the perpetual licensing of TRADExpress RealTime Clearing. This is a state-of-the-art, flexible multimarket clearing system with real time data processing and risk calculation capacities.

IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE) announced that it has applied to register its ICE Trade Vault service as a swap data repository (SDR) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, announced that it has begun clearing Euro-denominated interest rate swaps (IRS). The company also announced that it set a new daily record for IRS clearing on October 18, 2011, with $8 billion in U. S. customer volume cleared.

Singapore Exchange (SGX) successfully launched its clearing service for OTC traded Asian Foreign Exchange (FX) Forwards (non-deliverable) with Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank and OCBC Bank clearing their first Asian FX Forwards with the Exchange.

NASDAQ OMX Nordic, part of The NASDAQ OMX Group Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ), announces its intention to introduce competitive Central Counterparty (CCP) clearing by end of April 2012* in cooperation with EMCF, EuroCCP and SIX x-clear. The April 2012 timeline was established in consultation with NASDAQ OMX’s trading members. Interoperability will allow members at NASDAQ OMX Nordic exchanges to choose between multiple clearing houses to clear and settle their trades.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and Clearstream announced they would establish a strategic partnership to support the bilateral loan (also known as credit claims) and syndicated loan markets. Clearstream will leverage DTCC’s Loan/SERV Reconciliation Service and begin to offer it in the first half of 2012. They will also develop bilateral loan services, which will be built on DTCC’s existing Loan/SERV platform and integrated with Clearstream’s collateral management platform.

After more than a decade of hesitation, the EU is now finally moving on to put in place a proper regulatory architecture for clearing and settlement. Following the agreement on EMIR, the EU Commission has proposed harmonized rules for CSD’s, while the ECB is moving on with its plans for a central euro-zone settlement entity. After the unfortunate bypass of the 2006 Code of Conduct, the EU will now have rules to ensure cross border provision of services, (interoperability) and competition between clearing and settlement entities in the EU. This will bring sea change in the sector, and could lead to further concentration in the sector to respond to tighter margins, as we have seen in the area of trading platforms.

As US and European policymakers push ahead to complete drafting new rules to govern global securities market, the need for transparency and risk mitigation in global over-the-counter derivatives markets remains a critical focus. Although much of their initial focus was on requiring OTC derivative trades to be cleared through a central counterparty (CCP), policymakers and regulators are now examining other steps that are equally critical to helping mitigate risk, enhance transparency and ensure that regulators have access to crucial market data. One of the most effective proposals under consideration is to require the reporting of all OTC derivatives trades to a central repository where all underlying position data (and possibly transaction data) can be held, with unfettered access provided to all regulators globally. This paper explores the value of such a premise—particularly in terms of the powerful tool that a global repository provides for regulators—as well as the severe data fragmentation problems that are likely to hinder effective regulation if the result of policy decisions on both sides of the Atlantic is a reporting system that is not unified.

The global derivatives market is a main pillar of the international financial system and economy. As an indispensable tool for risk management and investment purposes, derivatives are used by more than 94 percent of the world’s largest companies.1) They contribute to improving operational, information, price, valuation and allocation efficiency, thus substantially increasing the efficiency of financial and commodity markets.2)

Derivatives help lower the cost of capital and enable firms to effectively invest and channel their resources. These factors are an important driver of economic growth.3) Europe – as the most important region in the global derivatives market – stands to benefit immensely from the positive impact of derivatives.4)

Derivatives are traded in one of two ways: either over-the-counter or on regulated markets, i.e. on exchanges. Exchange-traded derivatives are fully standardized whereas most OTC derivatives are customized contracts between two trading parties.

The OTC segment accounts for 90 percent of the market in terms of notional amount outstanding.
Here, the market volume is split equally between bilateral trading among market participants and multilateral trading, i.e. trading across a number of different market participants on organized marketplaces) such as interdealer-brokers or electronic crossing networks.

While the financial crisis caused massive fallout on the bilaterally traded over-the-counter (OTC) side, exchange-traded and centrally cleared derivatives escaped with barely a scratch. Since then, growing clearing volumes point to centralised clearing becoming one of the major growth areas of the financial market. The crisis exposed inefficiencies as large segments of the market were neither standardised nor automated – despite the speed of global trading activity and the increased complexity of transactions. This was not seen to be a problem in a bull market but, when the credit crisis rapidly unfolded, users of bilateral transactions were scrambling to pick up the pieces. OTC market participants and regulators alike have realized that clearing houses offering central counterparty services (CCP) provide practical solutions that the market desperately needs: transparency, neutrality and efficiency enabling the mitigation of counterparty risk.

WFE agrees that a global review of market infrastructure institutions is important stock-taking in light of financial market events and operating conditions post-2007. The goal of creating a single set of overarching standards is valuable for WFE and its members, as with International Financial Reporting Standards, the OECD’s Principles of Corporate Governance, and IOSCO’s Principles of Regulation. The member exchanges have voted measures of public endorsement for them in years past, precisely because they promote a sounder global financial system. In this case, the CPSS-IOSCO idea of updating and synthesizing pre-existing work also makes good sense to move ahead in this direction.