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NASDAQ OMX Commodities and Natural Gas Exchange Inc. (NGX), a wholly-owned subsidiary of TMX Group, today announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance (the Alliance). The Alliance involves the NASDAQ OMX US physical energy entity, NASDAQ OMX Commodities Clearing Company (NOCC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc., and the physical energy exchange and clearinghouse of NGX, which serves more than 250 contracting parties in the US and Canada.
Together NGX and NOCC will provide a premier solution for transacting in physical energy in the US, helping customers maximize collateral efficiency, and enabling increased transparency and market liquidity. The Alliance will leverage NGX's established US natural gas trading and clearing expertise combined with NOCC's physical power know-how. NGX will offer trading and clearing services for the Alliance and NOCC will contribute account management, product development, and scheduling resources.
"Adding physical power products with an established organization such as NOCC is a natural addition to our successful physical natural gas business in the US," said Jim Oosterbaan, President of NGX. "We expect this Alliance to help new and existing NGX customers to improve their liquidity and collateral efficiencies through cross commodity netting."
"NGX is strategically aligned with our physical power business and their complementary natural gas products present a great opportunity to leverage our combined experience and capability in this unique regulatory environment," said Magnus Haglind, Head of US Commodities for NASDAQ OMX.
Subject to regulatory approval, NGX, a recognized exchange and clearing agency in Canada and a registered U.S. Foreign Board of Trade and Derivative Clearing Organization, will list and clear physical power futures contracts based on NGX's existing US physical natural gas futures contracts. As a result, contracting parties will benefit from:
- Collateral efficiencies under existing NGX margining rules via spread credits and cross-commodity netting
- Regulatory certainty
- Improved liquidity and distribution in Canada and the U.S.
- Introduction of physically cleared power products to WebICE through NGX's alliance with the InterContinental Exchange, Inc.
NGX expects to list the physical power futures contracts in September in concert with the novation of NOCC's remaining physical power contracts to NGX. The NGX physical power futures will initially be listed exclusively for the ERCOT (Texas) market, expanding later into the WECC region.
