CME Group, the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, announced today that it has completed its last major integration milestone needed to deliver cost synergies associated with the July 12, 2007, merger of CME and CBOT. The company announced that today its trading floor migration is completed, combining all equity, foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity open outcry trading facilities at the historic Chicago Board of Trade building.
Following the merger of the CBOT and the CME to form CME Group, the company in January successfully transferred 70 products from the e-CBOT platform to CME Globex. Today the transfer of more than 30 products and 2,000 traders, clerks and trading floor staff from the CME building was completed within a six-week time period. The floor integration will be marked with an official bell ringing at the start of livestock trading at 9:05 a.m. Central Time today with Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich.
"We have consolidated four major trading floors into two even more vibrant trading floors in one location," CME executive chairman Terry Duffy said. "The move marks a new era of trading for the combined exchanges and further establishes CME Group as a leader in regulated derivatives trading in every major asset class. We want to thank our members for their support and hard work to bring our floor communities together, thereby creating efficiencies for members and customers."
"Just ten months after our merger closed, we have delivered a successful integration that is already producing tangible benefits for our global customer base," CME Group ceo Craig Donohue said. "As a result of our merger, we are on target to achieve $150 million in annual cost synergies, and we are providing an opportunity for our customers to save a combined total of $70 million in cost savings through the discontinuation of duplicative order routing and data connections."
"The combination of trading facilities at CBOT has created new trading opportunities from day one, as members and customers can now see more product listings available to them on a single trading floor," CME Group vice chairman Charlie Carey said. "Of the 12.4 million contracts traded at CME Group on average each day, nearly 2.1 million trades are executed on our trading floors. We believe it is important to provide our customers with their choice of trading venue — open outcry or electronic — and we will support their decisions."
"I want to congratulate CME Group on their merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with the Chicago Board of Trade and for 160 years of futures trading," said Governor Blagojevich. "The merger of these world-class exchanges will make the financial industry even stronger. We in Illinois are proud of the fact that these markets have been an integral part of the financial community that literally began in our state."
The CBOT building is now home to open outcry trading for futures and options on grains, livestock, dairy, equity indexes, foreign exchange, U.S. Treasury notes, Eurodollars and more.
