Fortis’s European Multilateral Clearing Facility (EMCF), which started operating on 30 March 2007 clearing trades for European MTF Chi-X Europe, has unveiled clearing statistics for its first full year of business.
Since it opened its doors in March, EMCF has seen an increase in volume of cleared transactions from a daily average of about 900 in April 2007 to 70,000 in December 2007 and currently in excess of 300,000 cleared transactions a day. The clearing facility has signed up 21 clearing participants since its launch, of which 10 are direct and 11 are general clearing participants.
EMCF started with clearing all Chi-X trades on the offered AEX and DAX constituents, extending to include FTSE100, CAC40 and SMI20 constituents. The Swedish market was introduced on 14 March 2008.
“EMCF is committed to growing the clearing business further while at no point compromising its reliability as a central counterparty in the evolving European market infrastructure,” said Jan Booij, managing director, EMCF, in a statement. “EMCF will continue to flourish based on the principle of quality of service at fair market prices to all participants.”
Peter Randall, CEO, Chi-X Europe, added, “EMCF has proved that its virtual CCP model can halve the cost of clearing and I applaud its ongoing efforts, which have included introducing further fee reductions in March this year.”