CME Group Announces First Trades of New Fertilizer Futures Contracts on CME Europe

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Sep 25, 2015, 07:00 ET

LONDON, Sept. 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced the first trades of its new Fertilizer futures contracts on CME Europe, CME Group's European exchange. The contract traded for the first time on Monday, 21 September 2015.

The trade comprised of 200 lots of the December 2015 Urea (Granular) FOB Middle East futures contact, and was brokered by Freight Investor Services in London for corporate clients.

CME Group has developed a suite of financial-settled fertilizer futures for its European exchange, including products for the Chinese and Middle Eastern Urea markets. These products are available on CME ClearPort and CME Globex and sit alongside other agricultural products on the exchange, including Cocoa futures and options. The contracts are cleared through CME Clearing Europe, CME Group's dedicated European clearing house.

"Our fertilizer contracts offer new risk transfer and price management tools for the volatile global fertilizer markets, and it's great to see market participants start to adopt these contracts to manage their risk," said Jeffry Kuijpers, Executive Director, Agricultural Commodities & Alternative Investments, CME Group. "These contracts build on CME Group's expertise in developing agricultural products, including our existing suite of fertilizer swaps. Customers who use these contracts will be eligible for capital efficiencies and margin offsets through clearing services on CME Clearing Europe."

"FIS has been instrumental in fostering and developing the fertilizer derivatives market and responding to the needs of commercial customers and traders. The introduction of the Middle East granular urea (fob) futures contract to the market has been a logical response to the changing dynamics in the fertilizer market," said Ron Foxon, Senior Fertilizer Derivatives Broker with Freight Investor Services. "We are very pleased to have brokered the first trade and believe that this initial trade will be the starting point for significant growth in volumes and liquidity for Middle East granular urea (fob) futures contracts cleared on CME Europe."

These fertilizer contracts are subject to the rules of CME Europe and CME Clearing Europe. Details of the new contracts are set out below and full contract specifications can be found at http://www.cmegroup.com/europe/products. A complete list of products and specifications can be found at http://www.cmegroup.com/europe.

As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) is where the world comes to manage risk. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate. CME Group brings buyers and sellers together through its CME Globex^® electronic trading platform and its trading facilities in New York and Chicago. CME Group also operates CME Clearing, one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers, which offers clearing and settlement services across asset classes for exchange-traded contracts and over-the-counter derivatives transactions. These products and services ensure that businesses everywhere can substantially mitigate counterparty credit risk.

CME Group is a trademark of CME Group Inc. The Globe Logo, CME, Globex and Chicago Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and the Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are registered trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. KCBOT, KCBT and Kansas City Board of Trade are trademarks of The Board of Trade of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) and its products can be found at www.cmegroup.com.

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SOURCE CME Group