Eurex Clearing has received regulatory approval from European regulators under the European market infrastructure regulation (EMIR), after previously been turned down.
The Deutsche Börse-owned clearing house today announced its national competent authority, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), approved its application as a clearing house. It follows approval from the College of Regulators, which includes the European Securities and Markets Authority, central banks and supervisory authorities from eight European member states.
“Our EMIR authorisation is an important milestone and confirms full compliance of our clearing services with the EMIR rules,” Thomas Book, CEO of Eurex Clearing, said. “We are very happy that at this stage Eurex Clearing can provide its clients and members with the clarity and reassurance needed to undertake their readiness planning and onboarding preparation for the looming clearing mandate in Europe.”
Clearing houses have had to seek re-approval under EMIR, which mandates OTC derivatives to be cleared through a central counterparty. Eurex Clearing submitted its application to BaFin for authorisation in August last year. It was assessed as EMIR compliant by BaFin and was submitted to the College of Regulators on 10 February, but it wasn’t signed off.
Concerns has been raised that the move was purely political and that national regulators didn’t want some clearing houses to have an advantage over others by getting approval early.
ESMA also recently confirmed the approval of Polish clearing house KDPW_CCP. The other approved CCPs are EuroCCP and NasdaqOMX Clearing.