Battle for a benchmark

摘要

London's financial-futures exchange, Liffe, and the German/Swiss futures exchange, Eurex, are squaring up for yet another fight over competing futures contracts. Three years ago Eurex won the battle for the "Bund", the ten-year German government futures contract, because it offered cheaper, more efficient electronic trading (Liffe was then still an open-outcry exchange). For seven years the two exchanges had traded rival contracts, but when it was clear that Eurex had won, trading in London suddenly dried up, and all the volume went to Frankfurt.