BaseMetals.com :: LME Group - LME, LCH.Clearnet gold forward clearing service to launch in November

London, 26 May 2010 - The London Metal Exchange (LME) and LCH.Clearnet plan to launch a joint clearing service for over-the-counter (OTC) gold forwards in November, industry sources told FastMarkets on Wednesday.

An exact date will be announced at the annual London Bullion Market Association conference in late September in Berlin, they added.

The service will include tradable dates daily out to ten years with limited or no access cost for members, the sources said.

The London bullion market has been investigating putting its OTC gold forward contracts into a cleared format since the credit crisis at the end of 2008 raised the risk of counterparty default, and also the cost of credit. The LCH.Clearnet and LME partnership was announced at last year's LBMA conference in Edinburgh in early November.

The service joins an existing clearing platform run by CME Group, which since its launch in September 2009 has failed to gain much traction, mostly due to less interest from market participants now that the risk of widespread banking sector default has receded, CME Group separately told FastMarkets.

While this may be true, other market participants suggest that the new LME/LCH service may meet more success as a "London solution to a London problem", especially in light of the growing appetite for regulatory reform, expected to be more stringent in the US.

Trades will be matched and registered by the LMESMART system before being sent for clearing to LCH.Clearnet's new Synapse system, set for launch on July 12.

Meanwhile, the LME's other gold market initiative is progressing smoothly, the exchange's chief technical officer Michael Warren said at a London metals trading operations and technology conference.

The LBMA announced on March 17 an agreement to move into exclusive negotiations with the LME for the distribution and monetising of the LBMA forward curve.

"That's going very well," said Michael Warren. "We are already in the process of building it."

LBMA market-makers are to input closing forward prices into a 'CVRS-like' data aggregator, Warren said. CVRS is an options platform developed by the LME last year.

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