IntercontinentalExchange Group (NYSE:ICE) has announced an updated timeline in a press release for its transition of Liffe Administration and Management Limited (Liffe) to ICE Futures Europe. From the combination of the two London-based exchanges, it will create Europe’s leading multi-asset class exchange, offering derivatives contracts on U.S. and European?interest rates, single stock and index derivatives, emissions, energy and agricultural commodities.
The separation of the Liffe and Euronext businesses is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2014, at which point ICE will then begin transitioning Liffe contracts to the ICE trading platform and to the ICE Futures Europe exchange. This will begin with agricultural commodity contracts in the summer of 2014.
Liffe equity derivatives contracts, including indices and single stock futures and options, and interest rates contracts are expected to transition in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. It is anticipated that the Liffe operations will be fully integrated by the end then year.?
ICE will retain its UK data centre, located in Basildon, Essex and matching engines for Liffe markets will continue operating from this site. Customers should be able to continue using their existing colocation facilities and SFTI network connections for trading Liffe markets on the ICE platform after transition with no material changes anticipated.
For the Liffe’s contract transition to ICE Futures Europe, it will involve expanding the functionality of the ICE trading platform to include pro-rata allocation-based matching algorithm–an important feature of the short-term interest rate market.
The ICE trading platform will also offer key improvements including comprehensive pre- and post-trade risk management functionality and innovations such as the Interval Price Limit circuit breaker and high frequency messaging policies; these are currently in place across other ICE markets.
All Liffe contracts will be added to ICE’s low-cost trading front-end, WebICE.?
In addition, in mid-2014, ICE will transition the listing of Eurodollar and DTCC GCF Repo futures contracts from Liffe U.S. to the Liffe exchange in the UK. The clearing will transition from New York Portfolio Clearing to ICE Clear Europe centralising ICE’s global interest rate offering in London. The precious metals and MSCI equity index futures contracts, also listed on Liffe US but cleared at the Options Clearing Corporation, will be listed on ICE Futures US and cleared by ICE Clear US.
David Peniket will serve as the President and Chief Operating Office of ICE Futures Europe and Liffe. ICE’s existing London offices at Milton Gate, Chiswell Street will serve as ICE’s European headquarters for the combined operations of Liffe and ICE.
And on a final note, effective February 12, 2014, ICE Clear Europe plans to report all futures and options transactions executed on and cleared for ICE Futures Europe, ICE Endex and Liffe as well as all cleared OTC derivatives to ICE Trade Vault Europe. ICE Trade Vault Europe was approved by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) as a Trade Repository in November 2013.