The London Stock Exchange’s France-based clearing house LCH SA has connected its EquityClear service to Cboe Europe – including its off-book trade reporting service BXTR – and Aquis Exchange Europe.
Using EquityClear, customers trading on these venues and those reporting on BXTR can clear, net and settle trades at LCH SA alongside equities traded on Cboe UK, Turquoise Europe and Turquoise UK.
Through the use of EquityClear’s preferred CCP clearing model, users can choose to clear through LCH SA if both of the trade’s counterparties have elected LCH SA as their preferred CCP.
Allowing European euro-denominated securities traded on these venues to be cleared at LCH SA will offer market participants considerable margin, settlement and clearing cost efficiencies, LSEG said, while also supporting the development of liquidity in European equities markets.
“Through our Paris-based clearing house, EquityClear SA is focused on ensuring our customers continue to benefit from the largest pool of liquidity in cleared European equities,” said Ivan Gilmore, head of cash equities at LCH Ltd and SA.
“These new connections are part of our strategy to expand the trading venues available to our clearing members. Increasing the options for our customers of where they trade and clear enables greater opportunities for capital and operational efficiencies.”
The expansion follows record clearing volumes achieved by LCH in 2021, which were a result of building new connectivity and an increase of services provided.
EquityClear, in particular, set a new annual record in 2021, registering 1.9 billion trades, and connecting to additional central securities depositories (CSDs) in Austria and Italy.
“We’re pleased to be able to offer our customers the ability to clear at LCH’s Paris-based EquityClear service,” said Jonathan Clelland, chief executive of Aquis Exchange Europe.
“Expanding the clearing opportunities for products traded on our market supports our customers with greater access to the benefits of clearing.”