CME Group will initially focus on commodity products, and will look to develop additional markets over time.

CME Group, which runs the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, announced today that it had (finally) filed an application to be registered as a Swap Execution Facility (SEF) with the CFTC. CME Group plans for its SEF to be available over CME Direct.

Early on we speculated that the larger players in institutional electronic trading, such as CME Group and Thomson Reuters, would wait until soon before the October 2 SEF deadline to make their applications — and that is what has happened. While CME and Thomson Reuters have waited until (near) the deadline, the CFTC has already approved the SEF licenses of several firms including Bloomberg (which received the first SEF), Tradeweb, State Street, GFI, and MarketAxess.

To see the CME Group SEF press release click here.

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