ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 6 December 2011

Shanghai Futures Exchange aims to broaden its membership base to include both institutional and foreign investors in an attempt to attract overseas capital. General manager of the exchange Yang Maijun said that “we are studying how to allow banks, trusts, securities and fund companies to enter the commodities markets”, and the bourse hopes to expand the market within the following five years.

Chi-X Global: UBS AG bought a minority equity stake in Chi-X Global Holdings, making it the sixth member of the firm’s ownership consortium, which includes parent Instinet, BofAML, GETCO, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Quantlab Group LP. Deal terms were not disclosed. Head of global equities at UBS Mike Stewart stated that “given our reach and position in the equity markets across the globe, it made sense to become an active participant in Chi-X Global’s model.”

BATS Global will establish an “innovative market-maker program” to support its new listings market, BATS Exchange (BZX) which has gone live but does not have any listings yet. BATS plans to list on its own exchange, and it is also in discussions with other groups to list, as reported in the Financial Times.

LCH.Clearnet now accepts a broader range of collateral for initial margin and offers increased connectivity and variable notional swaps. The platform also 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.

LME launched a new version of its electronic trading platform. The LMESelect version 7 introduces a number of configurable new order types that can be implemented and also introduces a new FIX-based solution for market data which meets higher performance requirements, reduces costs and uses a standardized protocol.

BOLSAA signed a letter of intent to join MILA whitch market capitalization is expected to exceed $1 trillion.

CME set a new IRS & CDS monthly clearing record of $61.9b (+36% m/m) in November.

DB1: Eurex’s London head of business development Manuela Arbuckle, and Christian Voigt, part of Eurex’s executive business development team, will leave their positions this month, as reported in the Financial News.

LCH.Clearnet appointed Charlie Longden CEO of its credit default swap (CDS) clearing service, CDSClear. Longden previously worked in Markit as managing director of fixed income, and prior to that was global head of credit trading and eco-markets in ABN Amro.

MF Global’s former CEO Jon Corzine and other top director are being sued by former employees who accuse them of “misrepresentations and fraudulent conduct.” Lawyer for the class action Jacob Zamansky, alleged that Corzine and the board “breached their fiduciary duty to their employees and destroyed their careers and retirement savings. They need to be held accountable.”

Kazakhstan Stock Exchange: LSE and Russian exchanges Micex and RTS submitted proposals to provide the Kazakh bourse with trading systems and other collaboration, according to the Financial Times. CEO of the Kazakh exchange Kadyrzhan Damitov said that the exchange has a two-year “development strategy” which would see it modernize the trading system, and introduce an obligation for companies wanting to list that they sell at least 20% of their shares on the exchange before going for a foreign listing.

CFTC approved a rule that prohibits firms from using customers’ cash to invest in foreign sovereign debt or to finance in-house bets by other units or affiliates through REPOs, as reported in the Financial Times.

ISDA and the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association are suing the CFTC in order to block the rule on commodity position limits that caps speculators’ holdings in any of 28 commodities and expand existing limits from futures to the much broader swaps market, the rule was voted positively on October 18th, according to the Financial Times.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 5 December 2011

CME will accept offshore Chinese renminbi as collateral on futures trading. According to Bloomberg, CME issued a statement saying that “CME Clearing and HSBC have built the operational framework enabling HSBC Hong Kong to hold CNH deposits from CME Group clients and the use those deposits as collateral.”

LSE introduced a pricing promotion for December in order to deal with the anticipated end-year low volumes. Under the promotion, the first liquidity-taking package will charge a subscription fee of GBP 40,000 per month, reduced from GBP 50,000, in return for an aggressive execution fee of 0.15 bps. The second package will charge GBP 4,000 per month, reduced from GBP 5,000, for an aggressive execution fee of 0.28 bps.

BATS Chi-X Europe will not include ETFs in the initial stage of their clearing interoperability offering, “due to the on-going regulatory review of exchange-traded products within clearing”. ETF and exchange traded commodities (ETCs) will continue to be traded but all executions will be routed to existing CCP, EMCF, regardless of the participant’s choice of CCP for the underlying market segment.

CME will start clearing CHF-denominated and CAD-denominated interest rate swaps (IRS) by the year-end. CME also plans to add GBP and JPY rates clearing, which addition will allow CME to cover 94% of the vanilla IRS market, according to the Financial News.

CME met with Indianapolis officials last week regarding its potential headquarters’ move to Indianapolis from Chicago due to rising Illinois taxes, according to Reuters.

MF Global had mixed funds between securities and futures accounts owned by customers and transferred the money abroad to at least one entity, according a Reuters source. The report also quoted the source saying that MF Global had been using customer funds for “several days if not weeks”, as opposed to just a few days before the firm’s collapse.

LCH.Clearnet appointed BNY Mellon as an additional US collateral custodian. BNY Mellon will provide members and their clients with a choice of provider both for lodging collateral at the start of a trade and for managing the allocation of funds to either party due to market variation throughout the lifecycle of the trade.

CFTC may vote on a client-protection rule today, in response to a need to “tighten up” regulations on the use of customer money. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said at the December 1 Senate Agricultural Committee hearing that “I think that we should not allow what’s called affiliate repurchase agreements or in house – where you take customer money and lend it to another side of the house.”

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 2 December 2011

DB1-NYX merger: DB1 and NYX will meet EU antitrust regulators at 10am GMT on December 6 to discuss if more concessions are required to win regulatory approval for the merger, according to Reuters sources. According to the article, both exchanges have until the third week of December to offer additional concessions in a “last gasp offer”, and the antitrust commission will decide by January 23 whether to approve the deal.

TMX: Maple Group said that its proposed acquisition of TMX could give regulators the right to supervise clearing and settlement prices. Maple spokesman Luc Bertrand stated that Maple’s proposal for the CDS “model would be part of the recognition order, which, in our view, would give the commission the…. explicit responsibility on a go-forward basis to … reject or approve fees.” Bertrand also emphasized that “Out deal is based on getting regulatory approval for both. If we don’t have Alpha or we don’t have CDS there is no Maple transaction.”

MF Global had been accessing client funds for weeks before it declared bankruptcy, as opposed ot just in its final days as was previously reported, according to US authorities, the Financial Times reported. MF trustee James Giddens also said that “even if he could recover everything that is at US depositories, there will be a shortfall in what MF Global management should have segregated at US depositories.”

MF Global Singapore said that around 68% of customer funds, worth $322m, have been recovered and “the provisional liquidators are now looking at effecting a partial release of customers’ segregated funds soon”. SGX also said that it has completed the transference of margins and positions of MF Global Singapore customers to alternative clearing members, and all remaining customer margins have been returned to the liquidators.

SGX appointed Nanhua Futures (Hong Kong) as a derivatives market trading member, bringing the total number of trading members to 38.

SEC will start analyzing how private equity firms value their investment as part of a series to uncover wrongdoing. Regulators are concerned private funds might inflate their returns to attract new investors and boost their performance-based compensation.

US Senators Charles Schumer and Pat Toomey plan to ease IPO regulations in order to boost job growth, and will introduce a bill that would exempt small groups from some securities regulations for their initial years as public companies. This has received expressions of concern that rules would go too far and weaken public defenses against fraud.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 1 December 2011

Brazil’s Government eliminated the IOF tax that had been imposed on stocks (previously set at 2%), venture capital (previously 2%), ADRs (previously 2%) and private debt with duration of more than four years (previously 6%).

BATS Global completed its $300m takeover of Chi-X Europe and has pledged to merge both venues by 1H12, according to Reuters. BATS Global CEO Joe Ratterman said that “the completion of this deal joins two pioneering companies and together we will continue to be at the forefront of competition and innovation in Europe’s securities markets.”

DB1-NYX merger: EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that EU regulators will “discuss with the case team in the coming days or the beginning of next week,” and “this analysis of the results of the market test will be communicated to the parties, this will be done next week.”

CME is in talks with the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to enter the Chinese financial derivatives market, as reported in the China Daily. CME President Phupinder Gill said talks included the starting of a pilot overseas futures trading business that would allow some futures companies from China to buy and sell futures on CME.

NYX will shut down SecFinex, the European securities lending platform, after NYX decided that the business was no longer viable. NYX head of European sales and relationship management Lee Hodgkinson told the Financial Times that “we’ve had a look with the other shareholders at whether this makes sense strategically and we’ve determined that we don’t want to provide any further financial support for the company.”

Oslo Børs: the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway advised the government to refuse the exchange’s IPO application, stating fears of “conflicts of interest”. The regulator also advised that conditions should be imposed on Oslo Børs if the government did approve the listing, as stated in the Financial Times. The exchange will give the government its response to the regulator’s ruling later this month, and has also postponed a planned shareholder meeting to approve the listing until the finance ministry makes the final decision.

SIX X-clear achieved “above 25 percent by number of transactions cleared” in LSE’s blue-chip stock trading in the last couple of months. This is double the level of just two months ago, before the interoperability clearing service was implemented across European markets, according to the Financial Times.

ROFEX was selected by Futures and Options World (FOW) magazine as America’s most innovative market in product design.

US Senators aim to investigate regulators’ role in the MF Global case. Among the regulators called to testify before the Senate Agricultural Committee are CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler and SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican on the committee said that “the public is still in the dark on basic facts,” and “I hope the committee will be able to get some direct answers from Chairman Gensler and Chairman Schapiro.”

US Congress’ House Financial Services Committee bills clarifying rules on swap execution facilities (SEFs). The rules dictate that SEFs can serve as a platform for executing swaps and security-based swaps by requiring immediate execution of matched trades and allowing market participants to receive and respond to a single quote. The committee also removed regulatory requirements for SEFs to have a minimum number of participants receiving bids or offers and ensured that SEFs include voice-based and hybrid trading models, according to the Trade News.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 30 November 2011

DB1-NYX merger: rivals deemed that the remedies DB1 and NYX proposed to regulators earlier in November are insufficient. NDAQ Nordic President Hans-Ole Jochumsen stated that “the proposed remedies do not address the competition concerns raised by the European Commission’s competition division in the statement of objections,” and “they also raise complex issues of practicability, reliability, compliance, monitoring etc, that will make them ineffective.” A DB1 spokesman said that neither exchange has any intention of updating their proposal despite negative market feedback, as written in the Trade News.

TMX said that Canada’s commissioner of competition expressed “serious concerns” regarding the impact Maple Group’s proposed acquisition of TMX would have on competition. The commissioner was especially concerned about the competitive effects on equities trading and clearing and settlement services in Canada, but she has not yet reached a decision on the deal. According to Reuters, both Maple and TMX intend to work closely with the Competition Bureau to address the commissioner’s concerns.

Illinois House rejected the $250m tax break package that was meant to keep businesses such as CME and Sears in the state. Reuters reported that opponents in the legislature objected to large companies using their lobbying influence to push for tax breaks, when smaller companies get little or zero relief from tax increases which were imposed in January.

MF Global trustee James Giddens requested for an additional $2.1b to be released from frozen customer accounts. This would be the third transfer of funds since MF filed for bankruptcy protection on October 31, bringing the total amount distributed to around $4.1b. Gidden’s office also stated that this proposed $2.1b distribution would see MF customers receiving two-thirds or more of the money they had in their accounts, as reported in the Associated Press.

TMX agreed to purchase Sydney-headquartered Razor Risk Technologies for 3.49 cents per share, or a total of approximately C$10.18m in cash. Razor Risk is a provider of credit risk software to clearing houses, stock exchanges, financial institutions and brokerages, and TMX group head of IT, Brenda Hoffman, stated that the acquisition “supports several areas of TMX Group’s strategy and it provides a point of entry into the attractive risk management sector.”

Lighthouse Global published a study showing that the rapid growth of high-frequency trading (HFT) and the drop in number of market makers willing to invest in UK small and mid-cap stocks is part of a “slow strangulation of the ecosystem” for supporting these companies, according to the Financial Times.

CFTC will propose regulations governing the international reach of Dodd-Frank rules regarding the $708 trillion swap market in 2012, Bloomberg reported. CFTC commissioner Scott O’Malia expressed that the OTC “derivatives industry is global and defining where United States jurisdiction starts and ends will involve considerable debate”.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 29 November 2011

LCH.Clearnet moved its segregated funds in MF Global to the broker’s UK administrators, who plan to return some money to MF Global’s clients by March 2012. The process of managing the remaining positions is “virtually complete”, and MF Global’s EUR 14.7b of fixed income positions have been liquidated with a few exceptions, according to Bloomberg.

MF Global’s former CEO Jon Corzine has been requested to testify on December 13 at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing regarding the firm’s collapse. Senator Debbie Stabenow, who leads the panel, said that “anyone engaged in wrongdoing in this matter must be swiftly held accountable, to help bring justice to victims and to prevent further erosion of confidence in the financial system.”

ICE will restore the initial margin rates for speculative accounts for exchange contracts effective as of Wednesday’s trading close.

CME hired ex-Turquoise regulatory head Evelien van den Arend as associate director and assistant general counsel for the European, Middle East and Africa region. Prior to her post as legal and compliance counsel in Turquoise, Van den Arend was in charge of legal and regulatory affairs at NYX.

NYX Liffe will open a Hong Kong-based office on December 1. The office will be headed by Cecelia Zhong, Head of Business Development China, who previously managed NYX Liffe’s China initiatives from London.

SGX appointed Chng Lay Chew as CFO effective from December 29, replacing interim CFO and current Co-President Muthukrishnan Ramaswami. Chng was most recently “responsible for the finance functions of DBS Group’s operations in all countries outside Singapore”.

SGX will start clearing additional coal and naphtha swaps on its AsiaClear service from December. The new contracts include OTC CFR South China Coal swaps and CFR Japan Naphtha swaps which will start be cleared on December 5, while balance-of-month CFR Japan Naphtha swaps and balance-of-month FOB Korea Benzene swaps will begin clearing from February 1.

Indian commodity exchanges including Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), and National Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (NMCE), have opposed a proposal by the Finance Ministry of India which seeks to impose a uniform duty of 0.003% on all derivatives trades, including commodities, equity and electricity.

RTS Realtime Systems launched new data center hubs in Singapore and Mumbai, which is aimed at supporting low-latency trading on major exchanges across the Asia Pacific region.

CFTC will vote on a rule prohibiting brokerage firms which are known as futures commission merchants from investing customer funds on December 5. This was a rule that MF Global and other firms had previously urged CFTC to delay.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 28 November 2011

CVM, Brazil’s Securities Commission, will have access to a study provided by Oxera Consulting Ltd. regarding the efficiency of the Brazilian capital markets. The study will consider tendencies of other countries, such as competition among different trading systems in stock trades, and conditions for market regulations such as transparency pre and post trading and identification of final beneficiary in any executed trades. The study will also analyze questions related to the competition neutrality of the regulation regarding trading systems and supporting market activity structure.

BATS - Chi-X merger was formally approved by UK antitrust authorities and the deal will likely be concluded before year-end. According to the Financial Times, the combined entity will be known as BATS Chi-X Europe, and will take around a quarter of all European equities trading and will account for 40% of FTSE100 stocks trading.

TMX: Quebec’s regulator, l'Autorit des Marchs Financiers (AMF), commented that Maple’s proposal must “be improved so that Montreal remains at the very heart of the trade in derivatives in Canada and in a certain sense with the United States,” as quoted in Reuters. AMF director Jacques Parizeau also said that the CDS clearing house should remain part of MX and that MX retain Boston Options Exchange, so that MX cab have “just a little – or at least a little – autonomy with respect to new products or new links with other exchanges of derivatives.”

IIROC advocated the “status quo” for the CDS clearinghouse, raising concerns about pricing, governance and access to clearing and settlement services if it was bought over, and stated that “an unrestricted ‘for-profit’ monopoly for all clearing and settlement services in Canada would not be in the interest of the Canadian capital markets.”

DB1 upgraded its trading platform to the Xetra Release 12.0, which has order types including the strike match and top of book orders. The strike match order creates a link between Xetra and Eurex, and reduces “pin risk” for participants trading in both markets, and the top of the book order allows participants to ensure that the order is either placed at the top of the order book or rejected.

MF Global clients who had their funds frozen due to the broker’s bankrupt state will be able to apply for a partial return of their funds in two weeks.

Bahrain Financial Exchange (BFX) launched trading on its conventional market segment, which is open from Monday to Friday, with trading starting at 08.30 and closes at 21.30 Bahrain time.

Euroclear France, the French central securities depository, will introduce a tri-party collateral management service for the French market. The new service will be in cooperation with Banque de France and will collateralize exposures arising from domestic credit operations conducted by the French central bank.

Patsystems, the UK screen-dealing software house, was approached by ION trading for a possibility of a cash offer valuing each Patsystems share at GBp14. Patsystems has not made a decision on the takeover but will “carefully assess the merits of the proposed combination.”

European Commission estimated that the proposed EU financial transaction tax which would be introduced in 2014 may eliminate 70% of EU’s derivatives trade volume, as reported in Bloomberg. The Commission also issued a 14-page document last week stating that the levy, which would be set at 0.1% for stocks and bonds and 0.01% for derivatives would generate around EUR 55b in annual revenues.

EU regulators backed off a proposal that automated traders must stay in the markets quoting prices at all times, according to the Financial Times. Senior policy officer of securities markets at the European Commission Valérie Ledure said that “we would be open to improving on this position”, referring to their initial stance on high-frequency trading (HFT).

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 23 November 2011

LME: JPMorgan will buy MF Global’s 4.7% stake in LME for GBP 25m, making JPMorgan the largest LME shareholder with 10.9%, as reported in the Financial Times. JPMorgan will also purchase 25,000 “B shares” in LME, which confer trading rights but not ownership, for a price of around GBP 2m.

CME raised its MF Global guarantee amount to $550m from $250m. In an email statement, CME stated that “CME Group’s proposal is designed to increase the payout percentage from 60 percent to75 percent, and to accelerate the timing of that distribution to early December.

MF Global’s former CEO Jon Corzine and president and COO Bradley Abelow have been asked to testify on the brokerage’s collapse before a House Financial Services subcommittee, as reported in the Financial Times.

DB1-NYX merger: DB1 deputy CEO Dominique Cerutti said that both exchanges will decide “in the coming weeks” which trading platform they will use should the merger succeed. According to Cerutti’s interview with L’Echo, the choice between DB1’s Xeta system and NYX’s Universal Trading Platform “is technical and will have many implications”.

DB1: Clearstream CEO Andreas Wolf resigned and will leave the group at year-end to “pursue new activities.” Wolf, who has been with Clearstream since 2000 and CEO since 2007, will be replaced by board member and previous Dresdner banker Stefan Lepp.

NYX will extend the trading period of its Paris-based grain future contract by a year, and it will end its August wheat contract after traders repeatedly demanded that the contract be eliminated. The number of wheat contracts will be increased to 12 from 8 currently, maize contracts to 10 from 7, and rapeseed to 10 from 8, according to Reuters.

CME started trading the first US futures contract for biodiesel supplies. The swap future contract will be based on Houston biodiesel prices published by international energy price reporting company Argus. The contract will be traded on the NYMEX trading floor, and is available for submission for clearing through CME ClearPort.

Istanbul Stock Exchange and TurkDex are aiming to combine in a plan to develop Istanbul into a regional financial center. The combined exchange is expected to be moved to a new site on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, which is designed to be the location for a new financial center, according to the Financial Times.

DB1 and Istanbul Stock Exchange formed a cooperation agreement to support each other in the development of their respective securities markets. Both exchange have also stated their intention to cooperate in producing joint indices and product development for closer cooperation between Frankfurt and Istanbul.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 22 November 2011

MF Global trustee James Giddens estimated that the shortfall in customer funds at the broker may be around $1.2b, double initial estimates of $600m. Giddens also stated that he currently controls around $1.6b of the brokerage’s funds and that he aims to pay back 60% of customer funds by early December. Giddens’ announcement was following by the MF Global parent filing court papers along with JP Morgan, in which they sought the appointment of a separate trustee to take over the company’s assets in bankruptcy, as reported in Reuters.

DB1-NYX merger: EU regulator will seek market views on concessions offered by DB1 and NYX, according to Reuters. EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that “we are analyzing the remedies, we have not yet concluded our analysis. We will market test what they have sent us.”

TSE and OSE confirmed a merger which is expected to be completed by January 2013. TSE will take a majority stake in OSE in a tender offer at JPY 480,000 per share, totaling JPY 130b ($1.7b), a 14% premium to the last price before trading of OSE shares was halted on Tuesday morning, and from autumn 2012, both companies will be merged with TSE valued around 1.7 times OSE, according to the Financial Times. The combined entity, tentatively named Japan Exchange Group, will have TSE President Atsushi Saito as CEO and OSE President Michio Yoneda as COO. There are proposed costs synergies of JPY 7b a year.

Omgeo, a post-trade services provider, appointed Ted Leveroni as executive director of derivatives strategy and external relations. Leveroni previously worked at financial services firm State Street as Vice President, global product manager of collateral services.

ICE was upgraded to “Outperform” from “Market Perform” at Raymond James. Target price was set at $142.50.

CFTC warned that it takes customer account segregation “very seriously”, and that laws require customer accounts to be “segregated every moment of every day”. CFTC Enforcement Director David Meister was also quoted in Bloomberg saying that “we do not need to prove intent” and the regulator can seek a penalty for “every instance” in which accounts were not properly segregated.

EU Parliament launched a MiFID consultation, and “the wide ranging questionnaire seeks views on the scope of the legislation, proposals on the organization of markets on trading, corporate governance, transparency and investor protection as well as the role of the European Supervisory Authorities.” The deadline for submission of answers to the questionnaire is January 13, 2012.

Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will launch a review on high-frequency trading (HFT), which will include the recommendation of a repeal of India’s Securities Transactions Tax, which obliges a 2.5% levy on all intraday cash trades. SEBI chairman Upendra Sinha said “I endorse the view that a significant portion of the cost  of trading is because of the statutory duties” and “SEBI is in dialogue with the government.”

Bank of International Settlements (BIS) issued a paper warning that allowing broader direct access to central counterparties (CCPs) as part of the migration of OTC derivatives onto exchanges could add systematic risk and reduce clearinghouses’ robustness. The paper also stated that the success in achieving the goals of increased safety and resilience of the global financial system depends on whether market participants are able to obtain access to central clearing directly or indirectly.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com

ERDesk EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 21 November 2011

LME: “A whole raft of” bidders including JP Morgan, “along with several other members of the LME” are interested in MF Global’s 4.7% stake in LME, according to the Financial Times. Should JP Morgan succeed in gaining the stake, it would become the largest shareholder with 10.9%.

MF Global customers are questioning why only 40% of total customer funds have been authorized for release thus far, as $3b in funds are still frozen. Customers who had a mixture of cash and trading positions have not received any of their excess funds, according to Reuters. John Roe, spokesman for the Commodity Customer Coalition, said that the “Trustee is creating new protected classes within a pool of segregated customer assets,” and “this has dangerous implications in future Future Commission Merchant (FCM) bankruptcies.”

Direct Edge aims to open a Rio de Janeiro-based exchange by 4Q12, and also has plans to form partnerships for a clearing platform soon, according to the firm’s CEO William O’Brien, as quoted in Valor Economico. The report also added that BVMF3, which owns the CLBC clearinghouse, is unwilling to open its infrastructure to competitors.

TSE will acquire 66.6% of OSE via a tender offer, and TSE’s value will be calculated around 1.7 times that of OSE, according to a Reuters source. OSE’s remaining shares will continue to be listed after the merger, and if the merger succeeds, the merged entity will be third-largest exchange operator in the world, with a combined market value of traded stocks of around $3.6trillion. An official announcement is expected as soon as Tuesday.

CME will introduce a Nymex Brent 25-day contract on December 12, with the first listed month to be February 2012.

ICE treasurer and Vice Present of tax, Martin Hunter, told Illinoise lawmakers that ICE may end up paying more in state taxes under a bill aimed at reducing CME’s tax burden, as ICE earns a “significant allocation of our income” from Illinois, the Wall Street Journal quoted.

NDAQ unveiled Genium Risk, a clearing system that allows “real-time” risk management for multiple exchange-traded assets and OTC derivatives. The new system will be operated for NDAQ’s Nordic clearing house, and “capital efficient risk models for fixed income and equities will optimize the use of member collateral,” as reported in the Financial Times.

Plus Trading systems launched its PlusMatch exchange trading platform, which has an average latency of 200 microseconds to external clients via standard FIX, and a message throughput of 150,000 messages per second, and an average internal matching engine latency of 13 microseconds. The system also has the ability to scale one million messages per second, with a typical latency to external client of less than 100 microseconds.

TSE launched its new Next Tdex+ system and the third generation ToSTNeT system on November 21.

European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) aims to introduce a three-month time frame in early 2012 for trading firms and brokers to meet stricter HFT rules, the Financial Times reported. ESMA expects to publish recommendations on automated trading in the first weeks of January 2012, and EU members are to be given two months to comply with the guidelines, or give an explanation why not, and market participants given an extra month to do so.

Provided By: Equity Research Desk, www.erdesk.com