European Commodity Clearing (ECC) and the Allocated Bullion Exchange (ABX) have agreed to cooperate in the field of clearing and settlement. ABX, established in 2011 with its headquarters in Brisbane / Australia, operates the world’s leading exchange platform for spot allocated physical precious metals, offering trading services for gold, silver and platinum contracts. Under the agreement, ECC will provide clearing and settlement services for the international US-Dollar nominated contracts listed on ABX. The related extension of ECC’s service offering is envisaged for 2018 and is subject to final approval by the regulatory authorities.
Since its inception in 2011, ABX has modernised, globalised & integrated the precious metal markets by redefining the way physical bullion is traded. It connects all major global liquidity centers to break down the barriers of entry to the global wholesale market for market participants.
“We are very excited about the partnership with ECC”, says Eric Maine, Chief Strategy Officer of ABX. “Bringing one of the largest financial markets onto an electronic, institutional trading platform which is centrally cleared by ECC and their 23 global clearing banks and 400+ member firms, is a major step for both ABX and for the precious metals industry. ABX and ECC’s efficient, cost-effective, transparent and robust centrally cleared model is what the global physical precious metals industry and related regulatory bodies have been waiting for, and represents a superior and viable alternative to the opaque, legacy, unallocated market.”
“By cooperating with ABX, we will be able to extend our clearing offering to a completely new asset class supported by our 24/7 spot clearing service”, comments Dr. Thomas Siegl, Chief Risk Officer of ECC. “Offering clearing services for ABX forms yet another milestone for us as a specialist multi-commodity clearing house and enables us to connect new trading participants to our network.”
European Commodity Clearing is the leading clearing house for energy and commodity products in Europe. ECC assumes the counterparty risk and guarantees the physical and financial settlement of transactions, providing security and cross-margining benefits for its customers. As part of EEX Group, ECC provides clearing services for EEX, EPEX SPOT, Powernext and Power Exchange Central Europe as well as the partner exchanges HUPX and NOREXECO. ECC is part of Deutsche Börse Group.
Allocated Bullion Exchange is the world’s leading electronic institutional exchange for spot allocated physical precious metals, across seven global trading hubs (New York, London, Zurich, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney). The ABX brings global trading, price discovery and centralized clearing facilities onto one standardised and secure online trading environment via our groundbreaking institutional exchange trading platform, MetalDesk.
