Moratorium on Admission of Eurex Participants in the U.S. Lifted /CFTC Issues New No-Action Letter

As of August 10, the U.S. supervisory authority Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has cleared the way for Eurex, the German-Swiss derivatives exchange, to enter the U.S. market again. In a "no-action letter", the CFTC grants Eurex permission to admit further U.S. participants and also to expand its product line to products tradable from the United States. This ends the freeze on Eurex trading that has been in force for over a year; the world's largest derivatives market had admitted the first U.S. participant in 1996 and currently has 18 members in the United States. According to Eurex, about 20 participants can start trading immediately, and 15 more U.S. firms will be admitted to trading at Eurex by the end of the year. Eurex CEO Jörg Franke said: "The U.S. market is an important part of our internationalization strategy. We welcome the CFTC's decision, which allows us to connect additional American firms as Eurex members." The admission of new U.S. participants will get under way immediately. These participants will already be able to start trading in September. The CFTC's no action letter also allows Eurex participants in the United States to trade additional Eurex products: Effective immediately, they will have the entire range of Euribor products available for trading (one-month and three-month Euribor futures and the options on these futures). This also applies to the CONF, the futures contract on long-term Swiss government bonds. Up to now, the SCHATZ, BOBL and BUND interest-rate derivatives as well as the DAX future have already been tradable in the United States. According to Eurex, its range of products in the U.S. will be expanded to further index products: Eurex is still waiting for approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to trade the futures on the MDAX, SMI, Dow Jones STOXX 50 and Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50.