EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 23 June 2009

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said before the Senate that the SEC should get expanded authority over security-based swaps and certain non-banking derivatives dealers that offer securities-related OTC products. The SEC currently has only antifraud authority over security-based swaps, which makes investigations “far more difficult and time-consuming.” According to Schapiro, the CFTC would handle oversight of FX, IR and commodity swaps, and the Federal Reserve would oversee banks that also deal in derivatives.

NASDAQ OMX CEO Robert Greifeld said he will soon announce partnerships with market participants for IDCG adding that the clearinghouse could ultimately generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for the company.

NASDAQ OMX will provide trading and clearing operations to a new Dutch equities search engine TOM (The Order Machine). TOM received an AMF license to start up a best execution service for equities and aims to launch a best execution service for derivatives by year end.

CME CEO Craig Donohue said CME would not move the NYMEX-COMEX trading floor to Chicago from New York.

MexDer is adding  a new futures contract on the Mexican 20 year bond to its product offering .  This new contract is expected to be well received by investors as the 20 year bond is an actively traded security.  A similar ten year bond, M10, futures contract has grown almost 70% on a year over year basis.

SunGard will launch Assent ATS, a crossing network for US equities. SunGard expects to be given broker-dealer support for Assent ATS, which will allow customers to fill an order before they send it to displayed markets.

LSE: Thomson Reuters will delist its shares from the LSE. Thomson Reuters PLC shareholders will receive one share in Thomson Reuters Corporation for every PLC share held. Holders of Thomson Reuters PLC American Depositary Shares (ADSs) will receive six Thomson Reuters Corporation common shares for each ADS held.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said the absence of central clearing of privately-traded derivatives concentrates "tremendous" risk in a handful of institutions.

CCFE and World Steel Dynamics formed the World Steel Exchange (WSE) to list futures contracts initially for steel scrap.

CCFE announced a record trading volume for the month June, with 133,175 contracts traded as of June 19. RGI futures and options traded a record volume of 100,138 contracts vs. 52,955 contracts in all of May 2009.

NYFIX completed its most recent OMS partner agreement with Bloomberg. With immediate effect, Euro Millennium can now be accessed through Bloomberg's Buy-Side Execution Management System (EMSX) and their Sell-Side Execution Order Management System (SSEOMS). NYFIX Euro Millennium ADV has increased over 70% so far this year to €82mn in May 2009. The depth of mid-cap and small-cap stocks now represents 39% of the total executed volume.

DB1: Capita Financial Group joined the Central Facility for Funds (CFF), Clearstream’s post trade solution for investment funds.

DB1 launched the CEF alpha+ macro news feed in cooperation with the financial news agency Market News International (MNI). The data feed supplies macroeconomic news relevant to trading directly from the sources in automated trading applications. The data is prepared for immediate processing by the applications. Banks and proprietary traders use news data in their algorithms as a signal for trading decisions.

NYSE Euronext´s BlueNext initialized a service that allows brokers to register OTC trades and eliminate paperwork.

Realtime Systems (RTS) will offer DMA and SMA to a broad range of US equity venues. RTS now provides a local hub for U.S. equity exchanges and liquidity venues in the Tri-State area with a New Jersey-based data center powered by Equinix.  The company will soon offer DMA to BATS, NYSE Arca and NASDAQ OMX.

Voltaire announced a new low latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet-based messaging solution in collaboration with NYSE Technologies, achieving average latencies of 25 microseconds at rates of 1 million 200 byte messages per second per core.

Quod Financial is providing a core technology for Amsterdam-based TOM, (The Order Machine), a new best execution service for equities. Quod Financial’s Adaptive Smart Order Router (ASOR) was selected for its adaptive technology to seek liquidity for cash equities and, eventually, derivatives.

Kyte is providing DMA to multiple trading venues, to algorithmic trading groups, traders with automated trading strategies and traders using FIX connectivity.

Egyptian Exchange (EGX) signed a MoU with Shenzhen Stock Exchange on June 7th on mutual cooperation on capital markets' developments. The main fields of cooperation addressed in the MOU include exchange of information regarding the regulatory framework as well as exchanging experts, staff and experiences for the respective benefit of both securities markets.

Dubai Mercantile Exchange confirmed today that the Dubai Department of Petroleum Affairs (DPA) will set the official monthly selling price for the Emirate’s crude oil based on a differential to the settlement price of the DME’s Oman Crude Oil Futures Contract.

NZX issued 65,276 convertible shares worth nz$500,000 to buy Country-Wide Publications.

FTSE partnered with index provider Record to create a range of Forward Rate Bias (FRB) indices.

DB1 target price cut to EUR73 at Goldman Sachs.

E*Trade was upgraded to outperform from underperform at FBR "to reflect a more attractive risk/reward following the recent capital raise and commencement of its debt exchange offer."

Knight expanded its ETF team hiring Managing Directors Reginald M. Browne, Eric D. Lichtenstein and Darren J. Taube. Browne, Lichtenstein and Taube joined Knight from Newedge USA, where they served as Co-Heads of the ETF Index Group. The three will report directly to Greg Voetsch. The ETF team is comprised of a total of thirteen sales and trading staff in Jersey City and two in London.

Euroclear Nederlands is proposing to offer a service to help equity issuers identify the ultimate holders of their shares. New legislation in the Netherlands, currently expected to take effect in January 2010, imposes strict shareholder identification disclosure obligations on entities holding shares listed on a Dutch stock exchange on behalf of investors within and outside the Netherlands.

The EU Commission will put dark pools under review during the forthcoming assessment of MiFID´s implementation.

ESCB and CESR published recommendations for securities settlement systems and CCPs in the EU. The recommendations aim to increase the safety, soundness and efficiency of securities clearing and settlement systems and CCPs in the European Union. They are based on and are at least as stringent as the draft recommendations for securities settlement systems that were proposed in November 2001 and the recommendations for CCPs of November 2004 issued by the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems and the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (CPSS-IOSCO).

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

NYMEX vs. ICE Through Jun 19, 2009

HIGHLIGHTS (as of June 19,2009):

• CME & CBOT volumes are down -16% y/y, with interest rates volumes at -18% y/y and equity mini volumes at -14% y/y.
• Clearport volumes are up +31% y/y and NMX core energy futures volumes are down -7% y/y.
• US cash equity volumes are tracking up, with Tape A up +14% y/y, Tape B +70% y/y and Tape C +5% y/y.
• Bovespa volumes are up -14% y/y and BMF derivatives are down -17% y/y.
• LSE volumes are down -42% y/y in UK and -36% y/y in Italy.
• Asian cash markets are up, with SGX +21% y/y and HKeX +23% y/y; while derivatives markets are mixed, with SGX -23% y/y and HKeX +3% y/y.

DUBAI TO SET CRUDE OIL SELLING PRICE BASED ON DME OMAN CONTRACT – June 23,2009

DUBAI, UAE – June 23^rd 2009: The Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME) confirmed today that the Dubai Department of Petroleum Affairs (DPA) will set the official monthly selling price (OSP) for the Emirate’s crude oil based on a differential to the settlement price of the DME’s Oman Crude Oil Futures Contract. 

Dubai has traditionally acted as the benchmark crude oil for Middle East producers, who price cargoes at a differential to published estimates of Dubai/Oman prices, typically set retroactively for the previous month. In moving to futures pricing, the OSP for month “M” will now be set in advance, with the differential set in M-3, and the final OSP calculated at the end of M-2.

Abdulla Abdul Karim, Director of the Department of Petroleum Affairs stated: “Dubai has priced its oil in relation to the DME from the launch of the Exchange in June 2007. Now, by announcing a forward price based on the DME Oman contract, we will signal to the markets the price of Dubai crude in relation to Oman, further strengthening the commitment to price transparency and fair value for Middle East Crude oil. The DME Oman contract continues to gain global acceptance as a fair and robust price discovery mechanism for crude oil destined for East of Suez markets.”

Welcoming the decision, Ahmad Sharaf, Chairman of the DME said, “This announcement, coming so quickly after the DME’s second anniversary of successful trading, demonstrates the enduring strength of the partnerships that the DME enjoys with its core shareholders in the Dubai and Omani governments. The transition also reinforces the ever-growing acceptance of the DME’s Oman contract as the third global crude oil benchmark, trading on the CME Globex trading platform of our other core shareholder, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”

Tom Leaver, Chief Executive Officer of the DME, added, “With this announcement, the DME now closes the gap for full price discovery of the two historic and accepted benchmark crudes in the Middle East. Publishing an OSP for Dubai is a strong signal to other GCC producers to join this initiative and back true and fair value for their oil exports by adopting DME settlements in their term contract formulae. This move ensures that customers know they are getting fair value and provides them with the ability to manage their exposure to price fluctuations in the major component of their feedstock costs using the benchmark futures contract.”

EXCHANGE NEWSWIRE, 22 June 2009

BATS Europe plans to continue inverted pricing for the NYSE Euronext indices and add 20 ETFs to the promotional offering through July. BATS Europe will also reduce the liquidity removal fee for those securities to 0.25 bps as of the 1st of July.

The UK FSA is working on at least six applications for new MTFs.

Hellenic Exchanges: investors at the shareholders meeting decided to reduce the company’s share capital by EUR6.4 mn by reducing the number of common registered shares outstanding from 70,485,563 to 65,368,563, due to the cancellation of the treasury stock; and to reduce the share capital by EUR9.8 mn through a reduction of the par value of the share from EUR1.25 to EUR1.10.

Kuwait Stock Exchange has selected NASDAQ OMX as technology provider. Within two months, KSE and NASDAQ OMX will sign a contract, by which NASDAQ OMX will develop a trading system.

LeveL ATS President Whit Conary said he would “agree that there should be more regulations on IOIs going out; (…) at the very least a customer has every right to know if information on his order is being sent out.”

NYSE Euronext will launch equal weight versions of AEX and CAC 40 Indexes.

Burgundy MTF ADV was €11.4mn or 0.5% of the Nordic markets during its first week after the full rollout.

Colombian Securities Exchange launched USD/COP Futures last week.

National Commodity Exchange of Pakistan will launch Brent crude oil future contracts by the end of July.

E*Trade priced its at par debt exchange for convertible notes for all of its 2011 notes and up to $310 mn of the 2017 notes. Citadel will exchange not less than $200 mn of the 2011 notes and between $600 mn and $1,000 mn of the 2017 notes. The convertible price will be $1.034 per share for debt exchanged before July 1 and $1.551 per share after that and before August shareholders meeting. E*Trade is may expand debt exchanges in the future.

E*Trade: Standard & Poor's downgraded E*Trade long-term counterparty credit rating to CC from CCC-.

E*Trade was upgraded to "in line" at Fox-Pitt.

MasterCard named former CEO of Citi's Asia-Pacific Ajay Banga as its COO.

VisaNet, Visa´s Brazilian arm plans to raise R$5.7 to R$7.2 bn in an IPO scheduled for June 25. This will be the world’s biggest IPO of the year.

The UK may impose more capital requirements on banks and institutions participating in the OTC derivatives markets. The Treasury will publish its proposal for legislation on regulations by the end of July.

The SEC may delay a previously expected expansion in the penny-pilot program by three months. Under the current program 63 securities are priced in 1-cent increments.

SIFMA commented on the SEC’s short selling price test proposal saying that the goal of restoring investor confidence won’t be achieved by through a new short sale price restriction and that the SEC should also consider the significant positive impacts that have already been achieved through other recent regulatory actions regarding short selling, including recent Rules 204T (addressing fails-to-deliver), 10b-21 (targeting fraud) and 10a-3T (requiring disclosure). SIFMA firms opposed the return of the uptick rule based on the last sale because it would be very difficult to make such a price test function in a post-Regulation NMS regime with fragmented equities markets.

IOSCO published a report containing six principles for hedge fund regulations which include: making them subject to mandatory registrations, making their managers/advisers subject to regulatory requirements relating to operational standards, conflicts of interest, disclosure and prudential regulation; brokers and banks providing funding to hedge funds should monitor their counterparties risk exposures. The principles also state that hedge fund managers should provide information to regulators for systemic risk purposes; regulators should aim towards convergence of good practices and have the authority to co-operate and share information.

China Investment Corp (CIC) is in talks with Blackstone to invest arround US$500 million in its hedge fund arm.

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

CME Group, NASDAQ OMX Celebrate 10th Anniversary of E-mini NASDAQ-100 Contract

CHICAGO and NEW YORK, June 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, and The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (NASDAQ OMX) (NASDAQ: NDAQ), the world's largest exchange company, today marked the 10th anniversary of the listing of E-mini futures on the popular NASDAQ-100 Index®.

Since the product launch in June 1999, more than 636 million E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures contracts have traded, making it one of the world's most successful equity index futures contracts. Today, more than 330,000 E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index futures contracts trade on average each day, which carries a notional value of $9 billion.

"Our partnership with NASDAQ OMX has benefitted our customers who have continued to embrace the E-mini NASDAQ contract because of its liquidity, transparency and relevance to their trading strategies," said Scot Warren, CME Group Managing Director of Equity Products. "With the trades backed by CME Clearing, which has served as the counterparty to every trade and so minimalized credit risk, the product has become even more attractive to customers."

"These products have enabled even more people to trade the NASDAQ-100 Index, opening up even more opportunities to gain exposure or hedge their portfolios' performance," said John Jacobs, Executive Vice President, NASDAQ OMX Global Index Group. "As the premier benchmark for non-financial stocks, the NASDAQ-100 Index continues to serve multiple investment needs."

The NASDAQ-100 Index includes the top 100 domestic and international non-financial securities based on market capitalization listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market®. The E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index futures contracts reached a record trading volume day of 1.15 million contracts on September 18, 2008, with open interest hitting a record 641,440 contracts on June 13, 2007.

The E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures contract trades exclusively on the CME Globex® electronic trading platform almost 23 hours a day. Options on the E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures were added in 2004. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has listed a full-size NASDAQ-100 contract since 1996.

About NASDAQ OMX

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. is the world's largest exchange company. It delivers trading, exchange technology and public company services across six continents, with over 3,800 listed companies. NASDAQ OMX offers multiple capital raising solutions to companies around the globe, including its U.S. listings market, NASDAQ OMX Nordic, NASDAQ OMX Baltic, NASDAQ OMX First North, and the U.S. 144A sector. The company offers trading across multiple asset classes including equities, derivatives, debt, commodities, structured products and exchange-traded funds. NASDAQ OMX technology supports the operations of over 70 exchanges, clearing organizations and central securities depositories in more than 50 countries. NASDAQ OMX Nordic and NASDAQ OMX Baltic are not legal entities but describe the common offering from NASDAQ OMX exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Iceland, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. For more information about NASDAQ OMX, visit http://www.nasdaqomx.com.

About CME Group

CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) is the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange. Building on the heritage of CME, CBOT and NYMEX, CME Group serves the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together on the CME Globex electronic trading platform and on trading floors in Chicago and New York. By acting as the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer, CME Clearing virtually eliminates counterparty credit risk. CME Clearing also offers financial safeguards to help mitigate systemic risk, providing the security and confidence market participants need to operate, invest and grow. CME Group offers the widest range of benchmark products available across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, and alternative invest ment products such as weather and real estate. CME Group is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol "CME."

The Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, Globex, E-mini and CME ClearPort are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago. NYMEX and New York Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group and its products can be found at www.cmegroup.com.

About E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures contracts

NASDAQ®, NASDAQ-100® and NASDAQ-100 Index® are registered trademarks of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (collectively, with its affiliates, the "Corporations") and are licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. The E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures contracts have not been passed on by the Corporations as to their legality or suitability, and are not issued, endorsed, or sold by the Corporations. THE CORPORATIONS MAKE NO WARRANTIES AND BEAR NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE E-MINI NASDAQ-100 FUTURES CONTRACTS.

CME-G

SOURCE: CME Group