Eleven new Irish equity options with settlement via CREST to be introduced in late April 2011
The international derivatives exchange Eurex announced today that it will launch new equity options based on 11 of the most liquid Irish stocks on 26 April 2011. The companies are Bank of Ireland, C&C Group, CRH, DCC, Dragon Oil, Elan Corp, Irish Life & Permanent Group, Kerry Group, Kingspan Group, Ryanair Holdings and Smurfit Kappa Group.
With this launch, Europe’s largest derivatives exchange will offer for the first time Irish equity options with home market settlement. The new equity options will be physically settled in the CREST system of Euroclear UK & Ireland.
“Using the new Irish equity options, our customers will be able to better hedge their exposure to the Irish equity market. Simultaneously, we are offering new trading opportunities as we will completely cover the index constituents of the EURO STOXX 50® Index as well as extending our coverage of the STOXX 600® index components”, said Peter Reitz, member of the Eurex Executive Board. “We will provide our customers with extended cross-margining opportunities as we offer trading of derivatives on all the major European blue-chip stocks on one platform.”
The new options will be denominated in euro. Eurex and Eurex Clearing have been officially recognized by statutory instruments as financial intermediaries in Ireland and will thus be exempted from Irish stamp duty taxation. Additionally, the customer business of all Eurex Clearing members will also automatically be exempted.
The new suite of options will have maturities of up to two years. To support order book trading, a market-making scheme will be offered to ensure order book liquidity. During the first five months of trading, supporting market makers can qualify for a 50 percent revenue sharing program that will last for two years. Trading hours will be from 9:00 am until 17:28 pm CET.
