ICE Surpasses $15 Trillion Milestone in Global CDS Clearing

NEW YORK, Jan. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- IntercontinentalExchange® (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of regulated global futures exchanges, clearing houses and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, announced that its credit default swap (CDS) clearing houses surpassed $15 trillion in cumulative gross notional value and 400,000 transactions during the week ending January 21, 2011.

"In a little less than two years, ICE and its clearing members have made substantial progress toward increasing stability and transparency in the CDS market, and in reducing systemic risk globally," said Scott Hill, Senior Vice President and CFO of ICE. "This is a significant achievement, and we'll look to build on it in 2011 with the expansion of our products and services."

ICE's North American CDS clearing house, ICE Trust, crossed $9 trillion in gross notional cleared during the week, resulting in cumulative open interest of $542 billion. ICE Trust offers clearing for 37 indexes and 89 single-name contracts. To date, ICE Trust has cleared $8.4 trillion in North American CDS indices (CDX) and $636 billion in single-name CDS.  ICE Trust began clearing North American CDS in March 2009 with 10 clearing members and today has 14 clearing members. ICE Trust expects to offer single-name buy-side clearing in 2011.

Through January 21, ICE Clear Europe cleared 3.8 trillion Euro ($5.1 trillion) in iTraxx indices and 695 billion Euro ($920 billion) in single-name instruments, resulting in 470 billion Euro ($633 billion) of open interest. ICE Clear Europe offers clearing for 30 indexes and 101 single-name instruments. The clearing house began clearing European CDS in July 2009 with 10 clearing members and today has 15. ICE Clear Europe expects to offer buy-side clearing and to commence clearing of Western European sovereign CDS contracts in 2011.

CDS clearing data, including daily settlement clearing prices, are available at www.theice.com.

About IntercontinentalExchange

IntercontinentalExchange® (NYSE: ICE) is a leading operator of regulated futures exchanges and over-the-counter markets for agricultural, credit, currency, emissions, energy and equity index contracts. ICE Futures Europe® hosts trade in half of the world's crude and refined oil futures. ICE Futures U.S.® and ICE Futures Canada® list agricultural, currencies and Russell Index markets. ICE® is also a leading operator of central clearing services for the futures and over-the-counter markets, with five regulated clearing houses across North America and Europe. ICE serves customers in more than 70 countries. www.theice.com  

The following are trademarks of IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. and/or its affiliated companies: IntercontinentalExchange, IntercontinentalExchange & Design, ICE, ICE and block design, ICE Trust and ICE Clear Europe. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For more information regarding registered trademarks owned by IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. and/or its affiliated companies, see https://www.theice.com/terms.jhtml

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 - Statements in this press release regarding IntercontinentalExchange's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see ICE's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, including, but not limited to, the risk factors in ICE's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, as filed with the SEC on February 10, 2010.

ICE-CDS

SOURCE IntercontinentalExchange