CME said 15 international financial firms are in line to become initial clearing members, including Bache Commodities, BHF-BANK, BNP Paribas Commodity Futures , Citigroup Global Markets , Deutsche Bank, INTL Global Currencies, HSBC Bank, MFGlobal UK, Newedge Group (UK Branch), Royal Bank of Scotland, State Street Bank, and UBS.
In addition, Citibank will join Barclays Bank and JP Morgan as settlement banks for CME Clearing Europe and its clearing members.
As part of its launch, CME Clearing Europe will clear eight OTC contracts based on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange’s (DME) Oman crude oil futures contract that will continue to be available for clearing through CME Clearing.
CME Clearing Europe will also begin clearing an OTC derivative contract based on rapeseed oil prices.
Rapeseed oil will be used for food and non-food usage (e.g., cosmetics) as well as in the manufacturing of biodiesel fuels.
The rapeseed oil contract is an expansion of CME Group’s European product offering, which goes beyond the existing product range listed for clearing in the United States and will be followed by additional regionally specific products.
CME Clearing Europe CEO of Andrew Lamb said that while the initial focus of this product expansion will be on commodity products – energy, metals and agricultural – CME aim to introduce clearing for OTC financial derivatives, beginning with interest rate swaps, in parallel with the deepening of the commodity clearing.
