CME Group's LaSala to Speak at CFTC's Metals Meeting

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Mar 24, 2010, 03:00 ET

CHICAGO, March 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CME Group, parent company of the world's leading and most diverse derivatives exchanges, announced that Tom LaSala, Managing Director and Chief Regulatory Officer, will be a panelist tomorrow, Thursday, March 25, at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) meeting to examine futures and options trading in the metals markets.

"We have successfully employed delivery-period position limits and accountability levels on a single month and on an all-months-combined basis for all of our metals products for many years," LaSala said. "We set accountability levels to provide the information required to effectively and efficiently monitor and control our metals markets. We are best positioned to police activity in our market, establish accountability levels, set position limits and assess whether a hedge exemption is appropriately granted to a particular customer.

"Federally prescribed position limits in U.S. metals markets, which are a small part of the global market, are neither necessary nor useful to insure that our markets continue to operate fairly and efficiently. We believe that the CFTC understands that any effort to constrain trading on U.S. exchanges by the major firms that are large enough to hold positions near the limits will simply push those firms from regulated and transparent markets into the cash market or to markets beyond the regulatory jurisdiction of the CFTC."

The CFTC meeting is scheduled to take place at 9:00 a.m., Eastern Time, Thursday, at the CFTC Hearing Room, 1155 21st Street, NW, Washington D.C. A copy of LaSala's written testimony will be available tomorrow here.

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 largest central counterparty clearing services in the world, which provides clearing and settlement services for exchange-traded contracts, as well as for over-the-counter derivatives transactions through CME ClearPort®. These products and services ensure that businesses everywhere can substantially mitigate counterparty credit risk in both listed and over-the-counter derivatives markets.

The Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, Globex, E-mini and CME ClearPort are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago. NYMEX and New York Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, 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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