Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the MEFF, the Spanish Financial Derivatives Exchange, signed an agreement today for the joint trading and clearing of futures and options on the Standard & Poor’s Euro and Euro plus indexes. The agreement will concentrate the liquidity for these products in a single central order book, allowing members of both exchanges to trade the European indexes in Europe. Under the agreement, CME members will have the same direct access to the MEFF electronic trading book for these products as MEFF members.
MEFF will become a special clearing member of the CME and will clear transactions in the index products through the CME Clearing House on behalf of its members and customers. In addition to the CME and MEFF, members of France’s Paris Bourse, Italy’s IDEM and Portugal’s BDP will be able to trade the new products through EuroGLOBEX, which gives members of any of these exchanges direct electronic access to trade a number of contracts listed at the other exchanges.
