The LSE Directory / Clearing houses
CME Clearing is the central counterparty (CCP) clearing division of CME Group, legally organized as CME Inc. and registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a derivatives clearing organization. It stands as the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer on trades executed across CME Group's exchanges, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange and COMEX, guaranteeing settlement and mutualizing counterparty credit risk among its clearing members. It clears listed futures and options across interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities and metals, plus bitcoin and ether futures and options including micro sized contracts, and it clears OTC products including interest rate swaps, FX non deliverable forwards, FX options and swaptions. Its OTC clearing service spans interest rate swaps, non deliverable forwards and FX options across 24 currencies, which CME Group describes as the broadest multi asset OTC offering of any global CCP. Rather than specializing in a single product line the way some peer CCPs concentrate on interest rate swaps or credit default swaps, CME Clearing combines listed derivatives clearing and OTC clearing under one guaranty fund and margin framework, letting clearing members net exposures across both listed and OTC positions for margin efficiency. It clears for futures commission merchants and other clearing members rather than directly for retail traders, so its customer base is banks, proprietary trading firms, asset managers and other institutions that access it through a clearing member relationship. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was founded in 1898 as a nonprofit exchange and established its clearing house in 1919; CME demutualized in 2000 and went public in 2002. CME Group took its current multi exchange form through the 2007 merger with the Chicago Board of Trade (about 8 billion dollars), the 2008 acquisition of the New York Mercantile Exchange and COMEX (about 8.9 billion dollars in cash and stock), the 2012 purchase of the Kansas City Board of Trade (126 million dollars) and the 2018 acquisition of NEX Group (5.5 billion dollars). In July 2012 CME Inc. was designated a systemically important financial market utility by the Financial Stability Oversight Council under Title VIII of the Dodd Frank Act, adding Federal Reserve oversight alongside its primary CFTC regulation. Its financial safeguards default waterfall places CME's own prefunded contribution, 100 million dollars for base products and 150 million dollars for interest rate swap products, ahead of a guaranty fund sized to a Cover 2 standard, meaning it is sized to withstand the simultaneous default of the two largest clearing members and their affiliates. Terry Duffy has served as CME Group's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since 2016 and as Chairman since 2002; parent CME Group reported 2025 revenue of 6.52 billion dollars, net income of 4.072 billion dollars and about 3,875 employees, and trades on Nasdaq as CME. In December 2025 CME Group received SEC approval to register a new entity, CME Securities Clearing Inc., targeting a launch in 2026 ahead of new U.S. regulatory mandates requiring central clearing of Treasury cash transactions from December 31, 2026 and repo transactions from June 30, 2027. CME has said the new clearing house will extend cross margining with the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, aiming to give clearing members capital efficiencies across futures, cleared swaps and Treasury and repo positions under one umbrella. Separately, in June 2026 CME Group announced Duffy will move to Executive Chairman in March 2027, with President and CFO Lynne Fitzpatrick succeeding him as CEO.
