CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, has completed its last major integration milestone needed to deliver cost synergies associated with the 12 July 2007, merger of CME and CBOT.
Today its trading floor migration was completed, combining all equity, foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity open outcry trading facilities at the historic Chicago Board of Trade building.
Following the merger of the CBOT and the CME to form CME Group, the company in January successfully transferred 70 products from the e-CBOT platform to CME Globex. Today the transfer of more than 30 products and 2,000 traders, clerks and trading floor staff from the CME building was completed within a six-week time period. The floor integration will be marked with an official bell ringing at the start of livestock trading at 9:05 a.m. Central Time today with Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich.
“We have consolidated four major trading floors into two even more vibrant trading floors in one location. The move marks a new era of trading for the combined exchanges and further establishes CME Group as a leader in regulated derivatives trading in every major asset class. We want to thank our members for their support and hard work to bring our floor communities together, thereby creating efficiencies for members and customers,” says Terry Duffy, executive chairman, CME.
“Just ten months after our merger closed, we have delivered a successful integration that is already producing tangible benefits for our global customer base. As a result of our merger, we are on target to achieve $150 million in annual cost synergies, and we are providing an opportunity for our customers to save a combined total of $70 million in cost savings through the discontinuation of duplicative order routing and data connections,” adds Craig Donohue, CEO, CME Group.
The CBOT building is now home to open outcry trading for futures and options on grains, livestock, dairy, equity indexes, foreign exchange, US Treasury notes, Eurodollars and more.