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Clearing banks and firms play an essential function in the roll-out of CME FX on Reuters as they enable the Reuters and CME communities to trade with one another. The four firms that join today further expand the reach of CME FX on Reuters. ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Societe Generale and Fimat International Banque SA formed the beta test group for this service, which has since been launched in Europe and North America on 14 March.
In addition, CME and Reuters also announced today that the service will start to go live in the Asia Pacific region over the next two weeks in key financial centres including Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.
"Since the launch of the CME FX on Reuters we have found it to be a viable avenue for market access. Liquidity has been deep, STP trade processing has been smooth and efficient, and the technology is stable. We are extremely pleased with how things have gone thus far, and with the prospects for the future. We plan to continue the roll-out of CME FX on Reuters within the global FX business at HSBC," said Dan O'Sullivan, Head of Spot and Forward Trading, HSBC Bank USA.
"In the short time since CME FX on Reuters launched, we are pleased with the level of trading activity by our launch firms and have received positive feedback from traders," said Bryan Hunter, Director, CME Foreign Exchange.
"Traders are finding CME FX markets attractive and are identifying new trading opportunities as a result of being able to view futures markets side-by-side with the spot interbank market. Additional banks and clearing firms in North America and Europe that understand the benefits this service brings to the FX markets and their clients have also expressed interest in participating."
Michael McCorkle, Reuters Treasury Business Manager, said: "Today's announcement highlights the market interest and good progress we're making on the roll out of CME FX on Reuters. With the support of the new clearing firms announced today, we'll reach a whole new set of end users expanding the impact of the service. This initiative brings more value to the Reuters Dealing community beyond the successful spot and forward foreign exchange products to include FX futures."
Comments from the new clearing banks that joined today include: "Calyon Financial is pleased to become a partner for CME FX on Reuters," said Marc Schultz, Executive Vice President, Head of Sales-North America, Calyon Financial Inc. "As a global leader in brokerage services, Calyon Financial is continuously working to bring our institutional clients innovative and efficient solutions, and CME FX will allow us to enhance our agency OTC and currency futures product offering to our clients."
Antonio Reyes Miras, Global Head of Electronic Trading for JPMorgan's Futures & Options business, said: "We see this initiative as an additional and innovative distribution channel enabling us to offer our futures execution and clearing services to the Reuters Dealing 3000 community. The CME FX and Reuters partnership brings together best of breed, by combining CME's mature currency futures offering and Reuter's industry leading financial information services."
"Refco's participation in CME FX on Reuters brings another channel to our customers seeking access to the global foreign exchange markets. As a major foreign exchange broker, we continually seek to provide clients with the best options to implement their trading strategies. This service fully complements our strategy of providing multiple access points for our global client base," said Sandy Maggio, Executive Vice President, Refco Group Ltd. LLC.
The launch of CME FX on Reuters paves the way for more dynamic and efficient markets as the first major linkage between sell-side traders in the interbank FX market and electronic CME FX futures markets, where hedge funds and other major buy-side participants play a major role.
CME FX on Reuters brings all the advantages and efficiencies of CME futures trading to Reuters Dealing 3000 users. CME FX futures appear in spot- equivalent terms, simplifying usage for cash market participants by facilitating price comparisons between the two markets, potentially bringing greater pricing efficiencies to both. Price displays and trading functionality replicate the look and feel of Reuters spot matching, however users are not required to subscribe to the Reuters spot matching service to utilize CME FX on Reuters. Executed trades can be routed through Reuters ticket output feed for straight-through processing. In addition CME's central counterparty clearing eliminates the need for bilateral credit lines, making it easier for banks to trade with non-banks.
CME offers 36 different foreign exchange futures and 23 options on futures products and received FX Week's 2004 eFX award for the best electronic futures platform. Last year, over 51 million FX contracts traded at CME with a notional value of over $6.2 trillion.
Reuters, an international leader in financial information and analytics, serves 328,000 financial professionals worldwide. Reuters Dealing 3000 platform is used by nearly 18,000 FX and money market professionals across 4,000 organizations to trade FX spot, forwards, options and now futures, plus interest rate and overnight index swaps. CME and Reuters previously collaborated in the late 1980s and early 1990s to pioneer electronic futures trading through the original CME(R) Globex(R) system.
