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In the same way that financial futures revolutionised existing capital markets, LIFFE expects Stock Futures to bring similar benefits to traditional equity markets through the innovative nature of the products. LIFFE will look to open up equity trading to a wider audience and deliver greater efficiency and liquidity to the underlying market. Stock futures will be attractive to both institutional and retail users of equity markets.
Stock Futures will circumvent many of the difficulties faced by investors attempting to trade across jurisdictional boundaries. By providing access to UK, European and US shares on a single trading platform, LIFFE is offering investors the ability to trade such securities under a single rulebook, a single regulatory regime and, through the London Clearing House, a unified clearing and settlement system. Furthermore, by trading on LIFFE CONNECT™, investors get all the benefits of the world’s most advanced electronic trading system.
LIFFE's Chairman, Brian Williamson, and Chief Executive, Hugh Freedberg, will unveil the Exchange's new global equities strategy, the Stock Futures contract specifications, and the initial list of companies on which the contracts will be traded, at a detailed press briefing on Wednesday 20 September 2000.
Brian Williamson, LIFFE's Chairman, said "LIFFE believes that stock futures will revolutionise equity trading on a global scale. We welcome today's initiative by the SEC and the CFTC to facilitate the trading of single stock futures in the US, which should open up a whole new market for such products - a market we are ready to enter." Hugh Freedberg, LIFFE's Chief Executive, said "LIFFE has worked with its customers to create the product that best meets their needs. This innovative enhancement of our equity product range to include single stock futures, alongside options and index products, provides customers of our market with further flexibility and choice."
