Derivatives

ICE disrupts CME-CBOT merger with $10 billion bid of its own

On Thursday last week electronic commodities trading platform InterContinental Exchange made a hostile bid for the parent company of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). The price values CBOT at around $10 billion.

CBOE reports second successive week of record activity in S&P500 index options

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) says that last week was the second consecutive week in which it experienced the busiest weekly trading activity for options on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in its history. Volume during the week of March 12-19, 2007 totalled a reported 5,051,009 contracts traded, besting the previous record of 4.35 million contracts set just a week ago (March 5-9, 2007).

SunGard says its margining application is compliant with the new margin calculation rules set by the NYSE and the CBOE

SunGard says its Margin Advisor application for monitoring of cross-asset margin now meets the requirements of the New York Stock Exchange's Rule 431 amendments and the Chicago Board of Options Exchange's Rule 12.4 that give broker-dealers, futures commission merchants (FCMs) and non-clearing members the ability to adopt a risk-based portfolio margin methodology from 2 April.

Quantifi launches Version 8.6 with CPDOs and tranche options

Quantifi, a provider of analytics and risk management solutions to the global credit markets, yesterday announced the launch of Quantifi Version 8.6, a toolkit for the pricing and risk assessment of credit derivatives. With the release of version 8.6, Quantifi maintains its leadership by being first-to-market with pricing models for some of the market's latest innovations, such as constant proportional debt obligations (CPDOs), options on CDO tranches, and forward starting CDO tranches.

ClusterSeven partners with DoubleHelix to offer spreadsheet management solutions

ClusterSeven, a spreadsheet management software provider, announced a strategic alliance with DoubleHelix, a management consulting firm specialising in derivatives, credit derivatives and treasury departments, to offer spreadsheet management solutions for mission critical spreadsheets in major investment banks, asset management firms and private banks. This partnership, formed in 2006, covers the UK and Europe.

Trading Technologies provides connectivity to booming MEFF derivatives exchange in Spain

Derivatives trading software vendor Trading Technologies International (TT) is introducing a trading gateway to connect its X_TRADER order-entry platform to the Spanish derivatives exchange, MEFF. TT plans to release the MEFF gateway later this year. The company will also launch a MEFF simulation environment, which will allow X_TRADER users to test and refine trading strategies without risking capital.

Eurex to use Bloomberg calculation model to price new credit index futures

Eurex, the international derivatives exchange, yesterday announced it will use a new Bloomberg model to calculate the final settlement prices of its new credit index future, to be launched on 27 March. These prices will be displayed and can be analysed on the Bloomberg Professional service.