The Royal Mint, a 1,000-year-old institution owned by HM Treasury, has teamed up with derivatives marketplace CME Group to launch a digitised gold offering called Royal Mint Gold (RMG), heralding a new way for traders and investors to trade, execute and settle gold. The new product, launching in 2017, will see The Royal Mint issue RMG as a digital record of ownership for gold stored at its highly-secure on-site bullion vault storage facility.   CME Group will develop, implement and operate the product’s digital trading platform.    The new service will provide an easier, cost-effective and cryptographically secure alternative to

The Deutsche Bundesbank and Deutsche Börse have jointly launched a functional prototype for the blockchain technology-based settlement of securities. The prototype is designed to provide the technical functionality for the settlement of securities in delivery-versus-payment mode for centrally-issued digital coins, as well as the pure transfer of either digital coins or digital securities alone.   In addition, it is capable of settling basic corporate actions such as coupon payments on securities and the redemption of maturing securities.   The Deutsche Bundesbank and Deutsche Börse plan to develop the prototype further over the next few months, and this product will then

The European Energy Exchange (EEX) has registered its first trade in EUA options. The trade was registered in the December 2016 expiry period with a volume of 250,000 EUAs.   The trade was conducted by CEZ and another counterparty on 25 November and was registered through brokerage firm Evolution Markets.   Having launched in mid-October this year, the EUA options contracts are available for the current and the next eight December expiries.   Steffen Köhler (pictured), chief operating officer of EEX, says: “The introduction of options adds further weight to EEX’s emissions offering. The new contracts will help our clients

The European Energy Exchange (EEX) has published the calendar for the auctioning of EU emission allowances (EUA) for 2017 in coordination with the European Commission and the participating member states as well as with the competent German authorities. EEX will carry out EUA auctions on behalf of 25 member states on three days per week in the framework of the common EU auction platform. These auctions are scheduled to take place on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays during 9 January to 14 December 2017.   In its capacity as the auction platform appointed by the Federal Republic of Germany, EEX will carry

PEGAS, the pan-European gas trading platform operated by Powernext, has launched new spot and futures contracts on the Danish ETF (Exchange Transfer Facility). This launch completes the process announced in July 2016 where Powernext acquired 100 per cent of Gaspoint Nordic from EEX and Energinet.dk.   Gaspoint Nordic is now an integral part of the PEGAS offering.   For the go-live date of 17 November, all 13 members of Gaspoint Nordic were admitted on PEGAS and ready to trade on ETF spot and futures. The total traded volume on ETF as of 23 November has reached 404,880 GWh on the

After several years of absence, new structured certificates issued by UniCredit Bank have been reintroduced to trading on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The certificates are offered by Alior Bank Private Banking and the underlying instrument is the S&P GSCI Crude Oil-Index Excess Return-Index.   “We are glad that UniCredit Bank AG has issued a new series of structured certificates on our market after a few years of absence,” says Małgorzata Zaleska (pictured), president of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.   “The new instruments add new price index linked to the global commodity markets to the range of available investment opportunities. We

Clearstream has developed a solution that supports domestic settlement of DekaBank’s cleared trading activity on Euronext, tpREPO and BrokerTec across Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The model responds to an increasing market need for simplified cross-border settlement and contributes to current EU-wide efforts to harmonise practices across Europe's previously disparate post-trade securities landscape.   Clearstream’s Settlement Agent Services help banks to improve their liquidity and collateral management by pooling liquidity in one place and making collateral management more efficient. As part of its offering around TARGET2-Securities (T2S), Clearstream Banking Luxembourg will act as DekaBank's settlement agent for fixed income and