Eurex is considering suing the Chicago Board of Trade for cutting trading fees shortly before the Swiss German exchange moved into direct competition with Cbot with the launch of its own US operations, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The report says Eurex considers the timing of the Cbot's temporary price cuts - which were introduced two weeks before the launch of Eurex US - as anti-competitive.
The FT says any action by Eurex would come in the form of an extension of an existing lawsuit filed against the Cbot last year. In October, Eurex filed an antitrust lawsuit against both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Cbot alleging that they illegally attempted to block its entry to the US market.
The paper also reports that the Cbot is launching a counter-attack on Eurex next week when the Chicago exchange begins offering futures contracts in the three key German government bonds - Bunds, Bobls and Schatz. The contracts are the world's most widely traded fixed-income derivatives, the FT says.