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Clear the Way: LSE (and LCH!) on the Block

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The biggest news from the exchange world in a long time is the proposed merger between LSE and Eurex. Both entities operate stock exchanges, but that’s a commoditized business these days, and it’s not the real driver of the merger. Instead, LSE’s LCH.Clearnet, and in particular LCH’s SwapClear, are the prizes. LSE and Eurex also both have valuable index businesses, but its hard to see how their value is enhanced through a combination: synergies, if they exist, are modest.

There are potentially large synergies on the clearing side. In particular, the ability to portfolio margin across interest rate products (notably various German government securities futures traded and cleared on Eurex, and Euro-denominated swaps cleared through LCH) would provide cost savings for customers that the merged entities could capture through higher fees. (Which is one reason why some market users are less than thrilled at the merger.)

A potential competitor to buy LSE, ICE, could also exploit these synergies. Indeed, its Euro- and Sterling-denominated short term interest rate futures contracts are arguably a better offset against Euro- and Sterling-denominated swaps than are Bunds or BOBLs.

The CME’s experience suggests that these synergies are not necessarily decisive competitively. The CME clears USD government security and STIRs, as well as USD interest rate swaps, and therefore has the greatest clearing synergies in the largest segment of the world interest rate complex. But LCH has a substantial lead in USD swap clearing.

It is likely that ICE will make a bid for LSE. If it wins, it will have a very strong clearing offering spanning exchange traded contracts, CDS, and IRS. Even if it loses, it can make Eurex pay up, thereby hobbling it as a competitor going forward: even at the current price, the LSE acquisition will strain Eurex’s balance sheet.

CME might also make a bid. Success would give it a veritable monopoly in USD interest rate clearing.

And that’s CME’s biggest obstacle. I doubt European anti-trust authorities would accept the creation of a clearing monopoly, especially since the monopolist would be American. (Just ask Google, Microsoft, etc., about that.) US antitrust authorities are likely to raise objections as well.

From a traditional antitrust perspective, an ICE acquisition would not present many challenges. But don’t put it past the Europeans to engage in protectionism via antitrust, and gin up objections to an ICE purchase.

Interestingly, the prospect of the merger between two huge clearinghouses is making people nervous about the systemic risk implications. CCPs are the new Too Big to Fail, and all that.

Welcome to the party, people. But it’s a little late to start worrying. As I pointed out going back to the 1990s, there are strong economies of scale and scope in clearing, meaning that consolidation is nearly inevitable. With swaps clearing mandates, the scale of clearing has been increased so much, and new scope economies have been created, that the consolidated entities will inevitably be huge, and systemically important.

If I had to handicap, I would put decent odds on the eventual success of a Eurex-LSE combination, but I think ICE has a decent opportunity of prevailing as well.

The most interesting thing about this is what it says about the new dynamics of exchange combinations. In the 2000s, yes, clearing was part of the story, but synergies in execution were important too. Now it’s all about clearing, and OTC clearing in particular. Which means that systemic risk concerns, which were largely overlooked in the pre-crisis exchange mergers, will move front and center.


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