EMCF, Europe's largest cash equity CCP, has extended its service offering to a wider group of products, clients and trading venues.
In addition to the CCP Services for cash equities provided by EMCF in 19 European markets through 9 Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTF) and Exchanges, EMCF will offer clearing and settlement services in Over The Counter Transactions (OTC) in ING issued Sprinters and Citi's issued Speeders (both structured products) traded on cats (Citi's Automated Trading Services).
EMCF went live with the services to cats on 21st of November, acting as CCP for OTC trades as announced on 25th August. The initial Clearing Participants are KAS Bank, BNP Paribas and Citi GTS.
'We are very pleased to have entered into the next phase of our clearing services to OTC trades,' said Jan Booij CEO of EMCF. 'With the successful extension of our offering to Citi's cats trading system, we are expecting more Issuers, OTC trading systems, Brokers and Investment Banks to consider EMCF's clearing and settlement services. EMCF's offer to support the clearing and settlement of bi-lateral OTC trades, fits perfectly with the opportunities identified by many Brokers and Investment Banks around the introduction of Organised Trading Facilities under the MiFID revision.'
Chuffy Hunter, head of Citi Automated Trading Services (cats) added: "Mitigation of counterparty risk through the use of CCPs is a key component of regulators' efforts to improve the overall risk profile of the OTC markets. Cats facilitates trades in many financial instruments and this new feature will allow counterparties to expand their product offering and markets."
Commenting on the development, Philippe Ruault, Global head of post-trade product management at BNP Paribas Securities Services said: "We support any new initiative designed to reduce risk in the trading process, particularly in times of uncertainty and turbulence. As one of the largest clearing members of EMCF, we welcome their selection by cats as CCP. Any client of ours using cats will automatically benefit from our close relationship with EMCF, and it is testament to our commitment to clearing all major trading venues on our clients' behalf."
Sikko van Katwijk, Member of the Board of Directors KAS BANK stated: "We are pleased that KAS BANK is part of this initial phase in becoming one of the first GCMs on this new introduced trading platform. By extending our general clearing membership with EMCF for cats we offer both our clients and their underlying clients a proven and efficient post trade solution."
Alex Klatt, Head of EMEA Retail Distribution for Citi Warrants and Ryan Marsh, Direct Custody & Clearing, Product Development at Citi Global Transaction Services added: "Following previous successful initiatives in other countries, we are pleased to offer Dutch investors an alternative trading platform where all of our Citifirst Speeders products are available as part of an attractive value proposition. In addition, Citi has extended its Settlement and General Clearing Member services to support clients active on this platform. This reflects Citi's on-going strategy to develop and grow its suite of trading, settlement and clearing services as well as the significant progress we are making in our objective of introducing the best possible solutions for our customer base in Europe."