Eurex Repo and Clearstream announced today that they launched a new currency segment within the GC Pooling® market, Eurex Repo’s secured money market.
Trading in the new segment started last Friday, 29 January 2010. This new segment – USD GC Pooling® – comprises U.S. dollar cash trading and significantly extends the secured funding possibilities for the current 35 market participants already active in this market by introducing a second global currency.
Marcel Naas, Managing Director of Eurex Repo, said: “With our new USD GC Pooling segment, we broaden our market from a dedicated euro environment to a multicurrency environment. As in our existing Euro GC Pooling® segment, we provide access to secured U.S. dollar liquidity in an efficient and risk-optimized environment. Eurex Clearing acts as central counterparty, thereby offering netting and mitigating counterparty risk.”
Stefan Lepp, member of the Executive Board of Clearstream, added: “As in the Euro GC Pooling segment, we offer automated allocation of collateral to cover the new U.S. dollar exposure. Moreover, any collateral received by participants via USD GC Pooling can be either reused to cover additional USD GC Pooling transactions or directly pledged towards Deutsche Bundesbank.”
The open order book allows U.S. dollar cash trading against the existing GC
Pooling ECB basket which is based on Clearstream’s collateral pool. Eurex Clearing acts immediately after trade acceptance as central counterparty for all transactions and operates all of the delivery management and corporate action handling; U.S. dollar currency risk is integrated into the standard margin and reporting system.
GC Pooling offers an efficient and reliable way to manage open market operations of the Eurosystem as well as an integrated CCP that mitigates counterparty risks. In 2009, GC Pooling achieved an average outstanding volume of 73 billion euro on an annual basis, compared to 55 billion euro in 2008.