SwapClear $20.6 Trillion Notional Cleared in October 2011 and Largest U.S. Dollar Cleared Trades Compression in History at $8.26 Trillion

NEW YORK, Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet), the world's leading independent clearinghouse and a CFTC regulated DCO, today announced that its SwapClear service cleared $20.6 trillion in notional value in October 2011. 

LCH.Clearnet also announced SwapClear figures that detail its momentum in the United States and its position as the leading clearer of OTC IRS.  SwapClear regularly clears in excess of $1 trillion new OTC IRS trades per day and has close to 1 million cleared trades outstanding, equating to $290 trillion notional open interest and $226 billion in client clearing business. SwapClear also advised that to date it has cleared $98.3 trillion of OTC IRS for U.S. domiciled counterparties of which $42.5 trillion is denominated in USD and $35.6 trillion is in EUR.

"Clients trust SwapClear with clearing and risk management because the scale of our interest rate derivatives liquidity pool is unmatched," said Daniel Maguire, Head of SwapClear U.S. "We believe our dynamic product offering, proven track record in clearing unequalled volumes of swaps, and successful and orderly resolution of the Lehman OTC IRS default is helping us grow our market share, in the U.S. and abroad."

The firm also announced that it tore up a record $8.26 trillion of cleared U.S. dollar swaps through compression with TriOptima on October 21st and a further EUR 5.86 trillion of cleared EUR swaps on October 28th, taking its overall total of compressed trades to $83.5 trillion in USD, EUR, GBP and JPY cleared IRS.

"Trade compression contributes to a more efficient and robust OTC derivative market and we are pleased that this is being increasingly recognized by the industry and by regulators alike," said Conrad Volstad, CEO of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. "With more IRS being cleared, it is important to reduce notionals outstanding and eliminate transactions from the system. As SwapClear continues to work with the industry to enhance efficiencies through tear-ups, we would encourage even greater participation to see more institutions benefit from reduced counterparty, credit and operational risk."

"Routinely compressing and eliminating cleared trades reduces the amount of open notional and trades in the OTC IRS market and the operational risk, burden and cost for all participants; furthermore it aligns SwapClear with the CFTC rules for DCOs to offer compression services," added Daniel Maguire, Head of SwapClear U.S.

The following is the full listing of metrics released today by LCH.Clearnet demonstrating SwapClear's central importance to the OTC interest rate swap market.*

* All data as of 10/31/11.

(1) According to ISDA:

http://www2.isda.org/attachment/MzE2NQ==/OTC%20Derivatives%20YE2010%20Market%20Analysis%20final.pdf

SOURCE LCH.Clearnet