The combination of the two London-based exchanges will create Europe's leading multi-asset class exchange, offering derivatives contracts on U.S. and European interest rates, single stock and index derivatives, emissions, energy and agricultural commodities.

Upon the successful separation of the Liffe and Euronext businesses, which is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2014, ICE will begin to transition Liffe contracts to the ICE trading platform and to the ICE Futures Europe exchange, starting with agricultural commodity contracts in the summer of 2014. Liffe equity derivatives contracts, including indices and single stock futures and options, and interest rates contracts are expected to transition in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.  It is anticipated that the Liffe operations will be fully integrated by the end of 2014.   

ICE plans to retain the UK data centre, located in Basildon, Essex and matching engines for Liffe markets will continue to operate from this site. Customers should be able to continue using their existing colocation facilities and SFTI network connections for trading Liffe markets on the ICE platform after transition with no material changes anticipated.

The transition of Liffe's contracts to ICE Futures Europe involves expanding the functionality of the ICE trading platform to include the pro-rata allocation-based matching algorithm that is an important feature of the short-term interest rate market. The ICE trading platform also offers key improvements such as a comprehensive pre- and post-trade risk management functionality and innovations such as the Interval Price Limit circuit breaker and high frequency messaging policies all of which are currently in place across other ICE markets. All Liffe contracts will be added to ICE's low-cost trading front-end, WebICE, used by thousands of traders around the world.

Also in mid-2014, ICE plans to transition the listing of Eurodollar and DTCC GCF Repo futures contracts from Liffe U.S. to the Liffe exchange in the UK. The clearing will transition from New York Portfolio Clearing to ICE Clear Europe centralising ICE's global interest rate offering in London. The precious metals and MSCI equity index futures contracts also listed on Liffe US, but cleared at the Options Clearing Corporation, will be listed on ICE Futures US and cleared by ICE Clear US.

As previously announced David Peniket will serve as the President and Chief Operating Office of ICE Futures Europe and Liffe. ICE's existing London offices at Milton Gate, Chiswell Street, will serve as ICE's European headquarters for the combined operations of Liffe and ICE.

Finally, further to its obligations under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), effective February 12, 2014, ICE Clear Europe plans to report all futures and options transactions executed on and cleared for ICE Futures Europe, ICE Endex and Liffe as well as all cleared OTC derivatives to ICE Trade Vault Europe. ICE Trade Vault Europe was approved by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) as a Trade Repository in November 2013.