2017 has been an important year for Eurex, Europe’s largest derivatives exchange and part of Deutsche Börse Group. It provided both major challenges and opportunities, and called for the exchange to once again act as innovation leader to best support the markets.

After seeing challenging market conditions as a consequence of an election cycle in Europe, shortly before year-end, all eyes are now on MiFID II. “Eurex is ready and is supporting the transition of markets”, said Randolf Roth, member of the Eurex Executive Board. “2018 will be all about getting used to the new world, followed by the adaptions Brexit requires. We will support these disruptions with further innovative products and services.”

MiFID II causes fundamental changes and creates new competitive dynamics in Europe’s derivatives markets. Eurex’s core business strategy responds to the resulting structural discontinuities by providing:

• New trading models and off-book liquidity discovery services address best execution and transparency requirements;
• New access models and product innovations;
• New market making models respond to market making, algorithmic trading, licensing, capitalization and third country firm requirements including restrictive location and equivalence policies.

In the course of 2017, Eurex introduced major innovative products that support the market in shifting business from Over-the-counter (OTC) to exchange-traded derivatives (ETD) wherever suitable. Examples are Eurex’s EURO STOXX 50 Total Return Futures, new instruments in the fixed-income space as well as the expansion of the MSCI universe that supports the buy-side.

“We all heard a great deal of talk about futurisation, and only a few months ago market observers seemed to get the impression that this was just another buzz word,” Roth said. “The good news is: It’s not. Our Total Return Futures on ESX50 turn out to be a true real-life example for futurisation.” So far, ten percent of the market has migrated to Eurex’s TRF product. “This success shows that regulation is a driver for innovation.” In TRF, around 190,000 contracts were traded in November, year-to date more than 500,000.

In November, the total trading volume was 133.3 million contracts (Nov 2016: 151.8 million; Oct 2017: 115.8 million).

Business overview – November 2017