Regulatory permission for transatlantic trading and a new rates market has the London Stock Exchange Group making a major derivatives push into 2017.

The exchange operator began trading on its CurveGlobal interest rates derivative market in late September.

“We are trading several thousands of lots per day, which I think for a beginning is really, good,” Nicolas Bertrand, head of equity and derivatives markets at the London Stock Exchange Group told Markets Media. “It’s quite encouraging to have listed the whole pan-European benchmark products and have very well-populated order books.”

The new markets is a joint project of the exchange operator, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Société Générale to compete against Deutsche Börse and the Intercontinental Exchange for trading the most liquid fixed-income futures.

Much of Bertrand’s focus for the remainder of the year and early 2017 is to continue to raise the market’s profile among prospective clients similar to the LSEG’s Italian derivatives market, he noted.

Within weeks of CurveGlobal launches, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued the status of a Foreign Board of Trade to the LSE, along with Eurex, CME Europe, ICE Futures Europe, and the London Metal Exchange.

The new status enables the LSE Derivatives Market “to provide identified members or other participants located in the US with direct access to its electronic order entry and trade matching system,” according to a prepared statement by the regulator.

“At the moment, it covers FTSE 100 and BIS30 futures but does not cover the CurveGlobal products,” said Bertrand.

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