Although it has been one of the market’s worst kept secrets, the announcement by Chicago Mercantile Exchange chief executive Craig Donohue that it will launch OTC FX clearing by the end of 2009 came as a bit of a surprise. According to Dow Jones Newswires, Donohue broke the news on the sidelines of a conference in Chicago on Wednesday. Apparently, the CME has decided to go for a soft launch, perhaps as a result of the debacle around FXMarketSpace that proved to be more FXWasteofSpace.
According to Dow Jones, Donohue described FXMarketSpace as too ambitious and said that the new venture will have one major difference: it will not involve the bundling up of trading on a CME-run platform. I’ll be speaking to the CME and will report more details in due course.