LIFFE Trades £197 Billion A Day In 1999

The value of contracts traded on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) averaged £197bn (EUR317bn) per day throughout 1999. The total nominal value traded for the year was £50,319bn (EUR81,000bn) making LIFFE the largest exchange in Europe and the second largest exchange in the world by value. The Exchange traded a total of 117,783,881 futures and options contracts in 1999. During 1999, LIFFE saw its share of the market for Euribor, the benchmark euro interest rate futures contract, grow to over 90%. This represents an average daily value of £88bn (EUR141bn), and was LIFFE's highest volume product with over 35 million contracts traded during the year. Equity and commodity products showed healthy growth in 1999; both increasing in volume by 23% and 10% respectively compared to 1998. LIFFE's FTSE 100 Index future grew by 25% and its options contracts by over 26% through the year. Hugh Freedberg, LIFFE's Chief Executive said: "1999 has been a challenging year for the Exchange and one in which we and our customers have embraced an enormous amount of change within a short space of time. The reinvention of our business from a floor-based market to one where, today, almost 90% of trading is done on our world-beating electronic system - LIFFE CONNECT™ - is providing cost and trading efficiencies to our customers.Increasing numbers of international customers are now accessing the system across the world's major financial centres. In addition, our co-operative partnership with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) - bringing together the world's biggest two futures markets by value - will offer our customers unrivalled capital efficiencies and trading opportunities in the world centres for short-term euros and dollars."