In its regular meeting in Leipzig on 14 June 2007 the exchange council informed itself comprehensively of the status of the project for gas trading on the European Energy Exchange (EEX). In this process, EEX is right on schedule: The products have been implemented and the IT systems have been tested. The simula-tions, which are currently under way, are successful. At the moment, 16 trading partici-pants have already been licensed for trading in gas products. Further trading partici-pants will be licensed and activated for trading. The exchange council approved the de-termination of the so-called minimum lot size on the Spot and Derivatives Market for gas to 10 MW. The minimum lot size is the smallest tradable unit. This change takes the wishes expressed by the market makers and the participants in the gas trader working group into account. At the same time, the exchange council asked EEX to check whether there is also an opportunity for smaller quantities to be traded in the fu-ture in order to improve the trading and accounting possibilities.
After that, the increasing share of OTC clearing in proportion to exchange trading was discussed intensively. In spite of sales figures which are positive overall, this ratio is cause for concern. For this reason, the exchange council expressly welcomes the package of measures initiated by EEX. Said package comprises the alternative use of Trayport, the EEX Communicator, which will integrate Trayport into the existing IT infrastructure as well as the development of a sales strategy and measures for the improvement of market making.
Furthermore, the exchange council dealt with the continuation of the transparency initiative. In this context, the decision was taken that information regarding the active trading participants on the Spot and Derivatives Market, the number of buyers and sellers as well as of the net buyers and sellers on the Spot Market will be made freely accessible on the web site of EEX. In addition to this, the shares in turnover for which the five biggest trading participants on the Spot Market and on the Derivatives Market account as well as the share of the market makers on the Derivatives Market will be published compared with the total sales. The list of trading participants will be supplemented with the trading participants licensed for the Spot Market for Switzerland and intra-day trading.
Moreover, a concept for the further development of the Market Surveillance Office in the light of the growing number of products and regions,which provides for both an im-proved IT infrastructure and a reinforcement of human resources, was presented to the exchange council.
The exchange council elected Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Pfaffenberger, Professor for Utility Management at the Jacobs University Bremen, as an additional member of the group in the capacity of an investors’ representative. Mr. Pfaffenberger was director of the Bremen Energy Institute from 1997 until March 2006.
The exchange council of EEX is a body of the exchange defined in the German stock exchange act. It now consists of in total 23 members that adequately represent the different interest groups on the exchange. In addition to 18 representatives of the trading participants (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 associations (German Association of the Energy and Power Supply Industry (VIK), Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv), German Electricity Association (VDEW) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI)) delegate their own representatives. The exchange council is complemented by the investors’ representative elected by the exchange council itself.
The tasks of the exchange council primarily include the adoption of the rules and regulations of the exchange, the appointment and supervision of the management board of the exchange and the appointment of the head of the Market Surveillance Office.
