Chicago, 5 May 2010

CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced the submission of a petition to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for approval to list twelve new agricultural swaps to be available on CME ClearPort, a set of flexible clearing services open to over-the-counter (OTC) market participants to substantially mitigate counterparty risk and provide neutral settlement prices across asset classes. These contracts will be listed with, and subject to, the rules and regulations of CME and CBOT.

“Many customers want to bring OTC transactions involving agricultural products such as grains, oil seeds and livestock to a central clearing facility in order to mitigate their counterparty credit risk,” said Tim Andriesen, CME Group Managing Director of Commodity Products and Services. “These new grain swaps will complement our grain futures and options contracts, which market participants rely on as global price benchmarks.”

The requested swaps, which are all based on listed futures contracts, include “European-style” settlement swaps for corn, soybeans, wheat, soybean oil, soybean meal, live cattle and lean hogs, which will settle on a specified single day. Also requested are “Asian-style” settlement swaps for soybean oil, soybean meal, live cattle and lean hogs, which will be settled based on the average of the daily futures settlement prices during a specific month.

These new offerings will be in addition to the suite of successful agricultural swap products that began trading in April 2009. The combined notional value of the swaps for corn, wheat and soybeans already available is $380 million. In addition, more than $206 million in agricultural index swaps have traded.

All agricultural swaps will be subject to position accountability, transaction reporting, and margining and risk management standards that are comparable to futures contracts. The exchange must receive a CFTC exemption to clear the agriculture swaps, as required by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Pending CFTC approval, the swaps will be available later this year.

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