BlueCrest, the independent investment firm and a global leader in interest rate trading, has confirmed that it intends to trade in CurveGlobal products in order to improve efficiency and create a more competitive interest rate futures market. The move comes after a record start to the year for the industry-backed platform, with month on month average daily trading volumes up more than 100% in 2019.

@CurveGlobal dashboard: total Open Interest up by 67% YTD, record total OI 580,179, Euribor 291,268, 3M Sterling 243,321 and 3m SONIA 45,490. Market first – fractional price created using block trades in 3M SONIA (SON9M) @ 99.253. #SONIA #bestexecution pic.twitter.com/9cEd8iIUIk

— CurveGlobal (@CurveGlobal) March 5, 2019

The support of BlueCrest is a key development for CurveGlobal as it works with market participants to disrupt the global futures market, which has seen sharply increased data and execution fees in recent years. Customers have also been hampered by the inability to trade and clear at venues of their choice.

Michael Platt, CEO and Co-Founder, BlueCrest said:
“We plan to trade in CurveGlobal products because it makes business sense. Increased competition translates to improved trading economics, which can only be good news for the end-user. We’ve already seen positive changes from existing infrastructure players as a response to CurveGlobal’s innovation. This, coupled with the ability to offset CurveGlobal futures risk with cleared OTC swaps at LCH, makes the value proposition impossible to ignore.”

Andy Ross, CEO, CurveGlobal commented:
“BlueCrest’s move is a reflection of the growing volumes in CurveGlobal products and the benefits of competition.  Offering choice to customers, better execution, lower transaction costs and efficient margin makes clear the economic advantages we offer.”

Among the benefits that CurveGlobal offers are:

• Lower transactional costs
• No market data fees
• Trading closer to mid in the block market
• Ability to cross margin futures with futures and futures with OTC swaps cleared at LCH

Since launch in 2016, CurveGlobal has led the way in innovation, introducing the first 3M SONIA contract in April 2018 and the first native intercommodity spread between SONIA and Libor contacts. It was also the first to move Sterling futures to ½ a tick across the whole curve.

CurveGlobal is an interest rate derivatives venture between London Stock Exchange Group, Cboe, and a number of leading dealer banks – Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Société Générale.

Source: London Stock Exchange Group