CME, the world's largest and most diverse financial exchange, today announced that Tina Lemieux, a 10-year CME veteran who previously served as head of the company's equity product team, will lead a new team designed to expand CME's global customer base by serving current hedge fund and active retail customers and attracting new hedge fund customers to CME's diverse group of benchmark products.
Lemieux will continue to report to Rick Redding, Managing Director, CME Products & Services. She will continue to lead CME's equity product group as the company conducts a search for her successor.
"We continue to see opportunity to promote the transparency, liquidity and operational efficiencies that trading CME products can bring to the hedge fund and active retail communities," explained Redding. "Creating this team will establish a single point of contact for these important client segments, and it will also enable Tina and her team to cross-sell all of CME's products and services to our existing and prospective hedge fund and retail customers around the world."
Since 2003, CME has worked to attract more hedge fund business through growing customer relationships and implementing innovative incentive programs:
Inactive Clearing Memberships: CME has 10 hedge funds that trade as inactive clearing members. Inactive clearing members are subject to financial reporting requirements and obtain member trading rates. They clear trades through full CME clearing firms.
Family of Funds Memberships: Of those 10 inactive clearing members, five hedge funds have CME Family of Funds memberships. A family of funds may receive member trading rates without the need for each fund in the family to become an inactive clearing member.
Corporate Memberships: CME also provides plans under which hedge funds can be corporate members, such that they are provided certain privileges of membership, including volume incentives. Currently, 26 hedge funds hold corporate memberships.
Pricing Incentives: In 2005, CME introduced pricing programs in which hedge funds could obtain discounted trading rates for CME FX Products traded electronically.
Due to the increasing sophistication of active "retail" traders, CME has also been successful in attracting more active retail business. The CME Partner Marketing & Education Program was established in 2004 to work with Futures Commission Merchants and the brokerage community to educate active online equity traders to CME E-mini Futures. In 2005, the program expanded to include educating cash foreign exchange traders on CME foreign exchange products, as well as including European traders.
In 2006, the reach of this program has extended again through efforts to reach more broadly into Europe and to also attract new trading volume from Asia. Since 2004, the program has co-sponsored over 400 live and online workshops and created numerous educational tools including several product CD ROMs, which have been distributed to over 30,000 traders worldwide. Also since 2004, the program has expanded from nine of the largest U.S. trading firms to include 21 trading firms worldwide, including European firms in the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Spain, Denmark, and the Czech Republic.
Before assuming this new role as Managing Director, Hedge Fund and Broker Services, Lemieux worked to develop hedge fund and retail business as head of the CME equity product line. She previously served as Director, CME Equity Products and held foreign exchange and technology marketing positions for CME. Before joining the company in 1995, she worked for Enskilda Securities' marketing and treasury sales areas in the firm's London office, where she was responsible for selling foreign exchange products to hedge funds. She also headed the London office of Indosuez Carr Futures, worked as a Marketing Director at Dellsher Investment Company, and served as a futures broker for First Chicago NBD Corp.
The new Hedge Fund and Broker Services group will be assisted by CME's Europe and Asia offices and will also include Kelly Brown, Director, Hedge Funds and Mark Omens, Associate Director, Broker Services in Chicago.