On Thursday,?CME Clearing Europe, CME Group’s European clearing house, announced that it had received Bank of?England?approval to add Overnight Index swaps (OIS), zero coupon swaps, Forward Rate Agreements (FRAs), basis swaps, variable notional swaps and SEK, DKK and NOK currencies for clearing beginning on March 3 to its?existing interest rate swap offering. ?The expansion of the products in Europe?adds to CME’s global offerings?which has?cleared more than $20 trillion in notional value?with?more than $11 trillion currently in open notional?since launching on October 19, 2010.
Lee Betsill, CEO of CME Clearing Europe, said in a press release,?”With mandated clearing of over the counter interest rate swaps in?Europe?likely to begin later this year, we are leveraging our experience from the U.S. under Dodd Frank to collaborate with buy-side and sell-side customers in?Europe?to prepare for the new EMIR rules. In addition, we continue to work closely with our customers to tailor our offerings to meet their risk management needs through services like our existing individually segregated account for collateral protection at the client level. This service compliments our new fully segregated account, pending regulatory approval, which will go even further by segregating that collateral with an external custodian at the client level.”
Thursday’s announcement further builds on CME Clearing Europe’s current offerings for over the counter interest rate swaps based on seven currencies: GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, CHF, JPY and USD with maturities of up to 50 years for USD, EUR, GBP and 30 years for all others. Globally, CME Group has more than 30,000 interest rate swap accounts with more than 400 clients using CME Clearing or CME Clearing Europe.