Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking Goes Live with ICE CDS Clearing
LONDON, April 14, 2015 – Societe Generale Prime Services – formerly Newedge – has announced that it has been approved as a clearing member of ICE Clear Credit and ICE Clear Europe, which are subsidiaries of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) and provide clearing services to the credit default swap (CDS) markets.
As a member of ICE Clear Credit and ICE Clear Europe, Societe Generale Prime Services is able to offer its clients CDS clearing services, covering North American and European CDS indices as well as European and sovereign single name CDS. Societe Generale Prime Services now offers client clearing services across all major OTC derivative asset classes – interest rate swaps (IRS), Foreign Exchange (FX) and CDS – from its global and cross-asset OTC clearing platform.
“Today, our clients live in a capital-constrained environment which means we are continually looking for ways in which we can help support them in making efficiencies through sophisticated solutions,” said David Escoffier, Deputy Head of Global Markets for Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking and CEO at Newedge. “ICE’s same day CDS clearing solution and portfolio margining risk model offers our clients capital efficiencies while maintaining strong risk management protection, providing real added-value to our clients while completing our global clearing offering in both the listed and OTC clearing space. Furthermore, it means we can offer our clients comprehensive solutions in credit derivatives, from research to trading and execution to client clearing.”
The news follows recent announcements by Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking that it has acquired equity stakes in Eris Exchange, a U.S.-based futures exchange group offering swap futures as a capital efficient alternative to OTC interest rate swaps, and GMEX Group, which provides interest rate swap futures contracts and derivatives indices.
“As the world leader in CDS clearing since 2009, ICE is pleased that Societe Generale has been approved as a member for both ICE Clear Credit and ICE Clear Europe, thereby offering their global client base central clearing services across a wide variety of more than 500 index, single name and sovereign CDS instruments,” said Scott Hill, Chief Financial Officer, Intercontinental Exchange.
ICE Clear Credit was established in March 2009 as the world’s first CDS clearing house, with ICE Clear Europe, ICE’s European CDS clearinghouse launched shortly afterwards in July 2009. As a leader in CDS clearing services, ICE had cleared $64.2 Trillion gross notional in CDS products as at March 27, 2015, $12.6 Trillion of which was for client-related clearing*.