ABN Amro joins Eurex OTC Clear
EMIR is the European Commsion’s response to the G20 commitment on OTC derivatives
Dutch bank ABN Amro has become a member of German derivatives exchange Eurex’s OTC Clear service, which clears interest rate swaps, as part of the bank’s compliance with EMIR.
Under EMIR, the European Commission’s new regulation on OTC derivatives, banks face the obligation to centrally clear certain classes of OTC derivatives, apply risk mitigation techniques for non-centrally cleared OTC derivatives, report all trades to a trade repository, and make data available to the public and to regulators. The regulation follows on from the G20 Pittsburgh agreement of 2009, in which leaders from several countries agreed to improve financial stability by reforming OTC derivatives markets to make them more transparent.
“As the largest clearing member of Eurex, we are pleased to further extend our clearing offering in the OTC area,” said Alexander Jacobs, head of the OTC derivatives clearing service at ABN Amro Clearing. “With the expansion of our Eurex Clearing membership to EurexOTC Clear, we can now offer our clearing clients a complete service offering where we can cross correlate between OTC and exchange-traded derivatives.”
The technical standards for EMIR were published in December 2012; the obligation to report is due to take effect on 12 February. It is expected that the EMIR obligation to clear will follow before the end of this year, with regulator ESMA due to release the regulatory technical standards in September.
ABN Amro is currently growing its presence in Germany, where last month it agreed to buy Credit Suisse’s domestic private banking business, which manages €10 billion in assets.
