This post-trade service, to be introduced in November 2010, will allow bilateral OTC trades to continue to be negotiated and executed as per current market practices. Contracts to be cleared will be captured via LME’s trade capture system, LMEsmart, with matched bilateral trades submitted to LCH.Clearnet for clearing.

Market participants will be able to benefit from margin offsets with other metal contracts listed on the LME, improved collateral management, increased liquidity and lower operational costs. 

Introducing clearing to the wholesale London gold market will provide the potential to minimise systemic risk and create straight-through processing efficiencies for market participants. Initially, clearing will be available for OTC gold forwards for daily value dates from spot out to 10 years. It is intended that this will be followed by traded options on Gold and then forwards on Silver, Platinum and Palladium and all be priced in $US.

Roger Liddell, Chief Executive, LCH.Clearnet said: “With our unique expertise in clearing a wide range of OTC derivatives and the LME’s unrivalled experience within the global metals industry, the benefits of this offering such as margin offsets and collateral efficiencies will be significant.”

Martin Abbott, Chief Executive, LME said: “We believe that this initiative will improve OTC precious metals trading and bring synergy to all parties involved, namely LCH.Clearnet, the LME and members trading on the OTC London gold market.”

London is the international hub for the bullion OTC market with trading conducted by international banks, brokers, fabricators, transport companies and refiners. The London bullion market is a wholesale market where minimum traded amounts are generally 1,000 ounces of gold and 50,000 ounces of silver.
For further enquires, please contact:

LCH.Clearnet:    Rachael Harper   +44 (0) 20 7426 7175
London Metal Exchange:   Chris Evans   +44 (0) 20 7264 1735

About LCH.Clearnet
LCH.Clearnet is the leading independent clearing house group, the world’s largest clearer of OTC derivatives and in addition serves major international exchanges and platforms.  It clears a broad range of asset classes including: securities, exchange traded derivatives, energy, freight, interbank interest rate swaps and euro and sterling denominated bonds and repos; and  works closely with market participants and exchanges to identify and develop clearing services for new asset classes.
LCH.Clearnet is regulated or overseen by the national securities regulator and/or central bank in each jurisdiction from which it operates.
In 2009 LCH.Clearnet cleared 1.6 billion contracts, including €479.8 billion of repo and bond exposures.

About the London Metal Exchange

The London Metal Exchange is the world's premier base metals market. It offers metals price risk management tools including futures and options contracts for aluminium, copper, tin, nickel, zinc, lead, aluminium alloy and NASAAC, steel billet, plastics and the minor metals - cobalt and molybdenum. In 2009, the total value of trading was $7.41trillion, and the Exchange finished the year with 5.96m tonnes of material on warrant in 633 storage facilities across 39 locations globally.
http://www.lme.com/