On account of the turbulences caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. the exchange council of the European Energy Ex-change (EEX) was briefed comprehensively on the impact on EEX during its meeting in Hanover on 16 September. The management of the exchange reported on the measures taken by the exchange and its clearing house, European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC), to ensure proper trading and to manage the default risk arising from the insolvency: After the suspension of the commodity subsidiary, Lehman Brothers International (Europe), both as a trading participant and as a clearing member on Monday morning, ECC applied for the immediate close-out of all open positions. In the course of Monday, the EEX Market Supervision closed out all risk-relevant positions of Leh-man Brothers International (Europe) without any discernible impact on the market. Dr. Günther Rabensteiner, chairman of the exchange council, emphasized that the rules and regulations of the exchange as well as the risk system have impressively proved their mettle in this test and that damage for the exchange, ECC AG and, in particular, for the trading participants could be avoided this way.
Launch of the new ComXerv trading system
The migration of the hourly auction on power from Xetra to ComXerv was successfully carried out on 1 September 2008. With the help of the new system, negative prices can now also be established on the EEX Spot Market for power. This innovation was initi-ated by the exchange council. By means of the migration of the system the preconditions have now also been created for seven-day trading on EEX and, hence, for the German-Danish market coupling project.
Market coupling project to be launched as scheduled
The management board of the exchange comprehensively informed the exchange council of the market coupling project between Germany and Denmark. The approval by the European Commission regarding the establishment of the European Market Coupling Company (EMCC GmbH) has been granted. The required IT infrastructure has been implemented and is now in the test stage. On 29 September 2008 market coupling will be carried out between Germany and Denmark for the first time.
At the same time, seven-day trading on EEX will start officially. The staff of the EEX Market Supervision will be supported by its French colleagues from Powernext SA, who will take over the execution of the auction and provide customer support for EEX Power Spot GmbH on the holidays concerned and on the weekends. Extensive training courses for the staff have already taken place and are now concluded.
Status of the co-operation between EEX and Powernext
An important partial step on the path towards a common power spot market has been implemented with the incorporation of the new spot trading company EPEX Spot SE with registered offices in Paris. As of the end of the year, EEX and Powernext will integrate their entire power spot trading activities under the umbrella of this new company.
The exchange council of EEX is a body of the exchange defined in the German stock exchange act. It consists of in total 23 members that adequately represent the different interest groups and business circles on the exchange: In addition to the trading participants with 18 representatives elected from within various groups (domestic as well as foreign transmission system operators – power trading companies, municipal utilities and regional suppliers, brokers and financial service providers as well as commercial consumers), four representatives of major associations (German Association of the Energy and Power Supply Industry, registered association (VIK), Federation of German Con-sumer Organisations, registered association (vzbv), German Association of Energy and Water Industries, registered association (BDEW) and the Federation of German Industries, registered association (BDI)) and Prof. Wolfgang Pfaffenberger, the investors’ representative, are members of the council.