Outlining its plans at a press conference in Chicago today, Eurex says it will offer a full range of products including derivatives on US and European interest rates and indices when the new exchange opens for business on 1 Febrary 2004. Eurex has thrown down the gauntlet to the leading US futures and options exchanges and opened the way for a full-scale price war by promising low-cost trading on two-, five- and 10-year treasury notes and on 30-year treasury bonds as well as the world's most liquid derivatives, the two-, five- and 10-year contracts on euro interest rates.

Eurex CEO Rudolf Ferscha says: "Eurex US will create new trading and clearing opportunities for our customers worldwide and accelerate growth in the US financial industry as a whole. Eurex US will establish a level playing field in the US futures industry for the first time. All its customers will have open and equal access to the world’s most reliable and scalable electronic trading system at the lowest cost."

There will be no membership fees and customers will not need to buy seats in order to participate in Eurex US. Ferscha says the vast majority of trades will be priced at 20 cents per contract or less depending on participation in incentive schemes. No individual trade, regardless of volume, will cost more than 30 cents per contract, he promises.

Eurex US says it will commit to maintain key prices for a period of five years and that customers can save more than $100 million in trading fees annually.

Eurex US filed formally for an exchange license with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) this morning. "We have had a very constructive dialogue with the CFTC and we look forward to working with the commission both now and in the future," Ferscha states.

As announced in early September, Eurex will enter into an equity partnership in The Clearing Corporation, with Eurex taking a 15% equity stake with a wide range of US market participants holding the remaining 85%. Ferscha says that a "significant stake" in the new exchange's equity has been reserved for take-up by US market participants.

The Eurex US trading system will be based on the a/c/e platform, currently used by the Chicago Board of Trade and on which over 80% of all trading in US fixed income futures currently takes place. The Cbot is planning to move to the Euronext Liffe Connect platform in November. Eurex says current a/c/e users will be able to leverage their existing infrastructure with minimal implementation effort and expense.