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CLEARING
CORPORATION ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF NEW OTC AND CASH MARKET
CLEARING SERVICES PLATFORM CONCERO
FIRST
CLIENT ON THE CONCERO PLATFORM
Chicago,
June 13, 2005
The
Clearing Corporation ("CCorp") today announced the
availability of an integrated over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives
clearing and cash market settlement service. Named "Concero",
this service platform will significantly enhance credit risk-management
and counterparty settlement services through CCorp's central
counterparty (CCP) facilities for commercial and institutional
users of the OTC energy, foreign exchange, and financial markets.
Specifically,
Concero enhances traditional CCP services by offering:
Freedom to choose non-exchange execution venues such as bilaterally
negotiated and voice or electronically brokered transactions
and submit them for clearing;
Lower
transaction costs and greater capital efficiencies due to
bilateral position offset, portfolio margining and re-use
of collateral;
Seamless
straight through processing of related derivative and cash
market transactions;
Flexible
capture of OTC-style trade details;
Risk
management and mark-to-market methodologies that extend beyond
futures style variation margin;
Broader
functionality such as confirmation and billing services for
OTC and cash market products.
In
certain instances, Concero will also allow market participants
to execute the products on multiple marketplaces and realize
the efficiency of a single CCP for risk and collateral management.
Importantly,
the launch of the new Concero services will not impact CCorp's
existing futures market clients. In addition, many of the
new Concero services will be made available using existing
communication links and will be transparent to customers.
The
technology behind the Concero clearing services platform derives
from advances in CCorp's industry-leading clearing and trade
management technology, including the globally deployed onExchange
ECS clearing system. CCorp will use Concero to launch a number
of new cleared products in 2005, both as independent CCorp
initiatives and also in partnership with marketplace sponsors.
Concero
was first deployed earlier this month when North American
Energy Credit and Clearing ("NECC") completed the
delivery of its first cash-market physical electricity trade
on June 7 which had been cleared on June 3. NECC's integrated
cash and forward market model is especially suited to the
flexibility offered by the Concero services platform. CCorp's
previously announced agreement to clear HedgeStreet's binary
options products will also use the features of the Concero
clearing services platform. CCorp will announce other initiatives
as they become available.
Brett
Paulson, President and COO of The Clearing Corporation said,
"The Concero platform's capability to process various
cash market and OTC trades based on each product's unique
specifications demonstrates the platform's breadth of functionality
to accommodate a broad range of physically and financially
settled products, whether they are fixed income, currency,
interest rate, credit, commodity or other derivatives. CCorp
is focused on packaging these services so that our clearing
participants can launch them with minimal system or operational
impacts. We will work with our clearing participants to make
the new product launches as quick and seamless as possible."
Richard
Jaycobs, CEO of The Clearing Corporation added, "CCorp
is actively working with commercial and institutional market
users to understand how CCorp can add value and differentiate
itself from other clearinghouses. The availability of Concero
means that CCorp now has the tools to be responsive to those
requirements and will establish itself as a pacesetter in
product innovation for other clearing organizations."
Jaycobs added, "This also demonstrates our commitment
to offering our clients the products and services they need
to address their cash and OTC market needs rather than require
those clients to adhere to more constraining futures market
conventions".
About
The Clearing Corporation
The Clearing Corporation is a stockholder-owned, Delaware
corporation now in its 80th year of business. The Clearing
Corporation serves numerous clients in a variety of markets
and is the only active independent derivatives clearinghouse
in the world. Additional information on The Clearing Corporation
is available at www.clearingcorp.com.
Media contacts:
CCorp --Andrew
Yemma, Intermarket Communications+1-212-888-6115
x 225
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