The London Stock Exchange is paving the way to launching a full market in futures instruments and derivatives that would compete head-on with Liffe, the London financial futures market.
LCH.Clearnet, the clearing service that is 55 per cent owned by the LSE, is to launch an open access portfolio margining service. Open access means it can be used to clear for any banks and other financial institutions dealing in derivatives, even if the actual dealing went through elsewhere.
The new service would offer such businesses a cheaper way of dealing, by allowing quoted and over-the-counter instruments to be cleared on the same platform, so saving money and reducing the amount of capital tied up by regulatory demands.
Some analysts believe that this is the precursor