Under the terms of the MoU, both parties will work together with a view to explore mechanisms which will enhance market liquidity and system efficiencies within each Exchange, including the joint development of new business opportunities.

Tadashi Ezaki, President & CEO of TOCOM commented, "TOCOM has been engaged in implementing new initiatives to its market with a goal to reach out to global commercial players and institutional investors. Forming ties with overseas exchanges is one of the key factors in achieving such a goal.

"We have cultivated a good working relationship with the Financial Technologies group through our cooperation with many of FT's established Exchanges such as the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). I am thus delighted to see that we were able to further strengthen this partnership through the signing of this MoU with SMX, the FT group's latest set-up in Singapore. We wish to work together to improve the trading convenience of both markets by providing risk management tools that meet the needs of investors and traders in the region, which I believe shall contribute to our efforts to firmly position ourselves as a primary derivatives exchange in Asia."

Thomas McMahon, CEO of SMX said, "TOCOM's enthusiasm for bilateral advancement of the Asian Commodity Derivatives Market in partnership with SMX firstly is testament to the special position SMX is in to unify what is still a very fragmented Asian derivative landscape into a consistent workshop for global benchmark trading prices and indices. Our MoU with TOCOM falls in line with our long term strategy to be the one-stop comprehensive product-range hub exchange which ties in all physical and derivative commodity players during pan-Asian trading hours.

"SMX and to a good extent Singapore, stands poised to be the central point of contact between all the world's commodity derivative trading players and the individual pan-Asian markets where fundamentals dictate realistic price discoveries."