Over 50 member firms have used Bclear since its launch to trade equity derivatives not only on Euronext’s traditional markets, but also in German, Italian and Swiss stock options not listed on Euronext.
Bclear is the new on-exchange administration and clearing service that provides a simple way to register and process wholesale equity derivatives trades through Euronext.liffe to clearing at LCH.Clearnet Ltd, reducing the counter-party credit, legal and operational risks associated with off-exchange deals. Bclear enables registration of both ‘standard exchange’ and ‘flexible’ trades in futures and options covering 12 country and pan-European indices and options on over 300 underlying European securities from 15 markets.
Bclear was launched on 24 October 2005 to allow customers to benefit from innovative, low cost fee schedules for the booking of wholesale equity derivative transactions. At the same time, Euronext.liffe went live with a secure, automated straight-through processing (STP) link between Cscreen, the pre-trade price discovery platform acquired by Euronext.liffe in April 2005, and Bclear. Since the acquisition of Cscreen in April the number of customers using the service has jumped from 190 to 377. Over 2,000 traders and brokers now have access.
Euronext.liffe’s chief executive, Hugh Freedberg, said: “Our fully integrated wholesale equity derivatives service was launched to provide our customers with an efficient and cost-effective facility and this is exactly what it has done. Activity through Bclear has already exceeded one million contracts and underlines the strong support the facility has already attracted amongst new and existing customers.”
Aisling O'Reilly, Head of Derivatives at Gartmore Investment Management plc said: "The advent of Euronext.liffe's Bclear facility for equity options in Europe enables clients to tailor option features such as strike and maturity with the advantage of a central clearing house backing the trade. Additionally, should participants choose to publish such trades, transparency in the European options market will be greatly increased."
On 28 November this year Euronext.liffe introduced another service, Afirm, which is geared towards providing operational efficiency for equity derivatives business conducted ‘off-exchange’ in the OTC market. Afirm is also linked into Cscreen and provides users with a simple but efficient choice between conducting their business on-exchange (Bclear) or off-exchange (Afirm).
