Source: Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)
Building on its successful strategy to attract new market participants, CME, the world's largest and most diverse financial exchange, today announced it will extend its global electronic incentive programs, including its European (EIP) and Asian (AIP) and eFX Bank (foreign exchange) incentive programs through December 31, 2007.
In addition, CME is extending the Electronic Corporate Membership (ECM) program, created in 2004 to provide proprietary trading firms and corporate entities with reduced exchange fees when trading CME products electronically. CME has extended this waiver through December 31, 2007 for newly approved participants and for ECMs whose average trading volume exceeds 50 contract sides per day.
"These incentive programs provide another avenue to attract new customers to CME," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "By extending our global incentive programs we hope to facilitate continued growth in our markets by attracting new business from customers who are new to CME or are currently trading very little in our markets."
"CME products allow customers to trade in every major asset class - interest rates, currencies, equities, agriculture and energy - and we remain focused on growing our customer base around the world," said CME Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue. "With volume on the CME Globex electronic trading platform increasing 34 percent from August 2005 to 3.4 million contracts per day in August 2006, these programs are helping CME attract new customers and increase our market share in the rapidly growing global derivatives market."