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New products from the European Energy Exchange (EEX) and changes to the trading systems and trading hours formed the focus of the deliberations at the first meeting of the Exchange Council this year, which was held in London under its chairman Peter Heydecker on 14 March 2013.
As the central European exchange market for energy and related products, EEX is planning to gradually expand its product offering to further European regions. For example, EEX intends to offer physical futures for power base load deliveries for Belgium as well as for base and peak load deliveries for the Netherlands during the second quarter of 2013. As a first step, month, quarter and year maturities will be available for trading. “As a result, we increase our scope and gradually implement a pan-European offering for our trading participants”, explains Peter Reitz, Managing Director of the Exchange and CEO of EEX. The Exchange Council approved the introduction of the Belgian and Dutch power futures as an attractive addition to the product portfolio and adopted the corresponding amendments of the rules and regulations.
At its meeting, the Exchange Council was provided with information on the migration of the trading systems on the natural gas market. In preparation for the envisaged cooperation with the French Powernext, EEX Natural Gas Spot and Derivatives products will be offered on the Trayport® ETS (Exchange Trading SystemSM) in the future. As an additional benefit of the new system, the trading participants will also be able to trade location spread products between different gas market areas. The members of the Exchange Council unanimously agreed that this forms an attractive offer which is also unique in terms of its geographic scope for gas traders.
In addition, the Exchange Council discussed the planned extension of the exchange trading days. At present, trading on EEX is not possible on German national bank holidays. In compliance with the international market standards EEX will expand the tradable days and use the Target2 calendar as basis. This calendar is applied for payment transactions by the European Central Bank. The Exchange Council expressly supports the harmonisation of the trading hours since this step is necessary and demanded by trading participants operating throughout Europe. The conversion of the EEX calendar to the Target2 calendar is planned for mid-2013.
The Exchange Council of EEX is an official body of the exchange under the German Exchange Act. It consists of in total 24 members who adequately represent the various interest groups and business circles: in addition to the trading participants, with 19 elected members from five different voting groups, four representatives from associations and one investors’ representative are members. The tasks of the Exchange Council include, in particular, the adoption of the rules and regulations of the exchange and their amendments. The Exchange Council is also tasked with the supervision of the Management Board of the Exchange and the appointment of the head of the Market Surveillance.
