Singapore, 22 July 2009 

Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) today announced appointment of Standard Chartered Bank as their Clearing and Settlement Bank. Standard Chartered Bank will provide electronic funds transfer and settlement processing services as well as maintain member clearing accounts to facilitate settlement of transactions executed on the Exchange. 

In addition to providing clearing banking facilities to clearing members of SMX, Standard Chartered Bank also provides employee banking services to the company.

SMX will employ a sophisticated straight-through-processing solution developed by Financial Technologies India Limited (FTIL) for settlement of trade obligations. This solution enables efficient fund transfer between accounts of SMX Clearing Corporation (a wholly owned Clearing House of SMX) and its clearing members maintained with Standard Chartered Bank. As SMX would facilitate trading across multiple time zones spanning from Asia to United States, special processes will be implemented by SMX and Standard Chartered Bank to support clearing in the extended trading window.

Noting the important role of the clearing bank in supporting the operations of an Exchange, Mr Thomas McMahon, SMX’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “As an international bank with a strong presence in Asia, Standard Chartered Bank is an ideal partner for SMX. The Bank’s leadership in transaction banking and expertise in clearing bank operations globally provides greater convenience to SMX clearing members as they operate in markets across the world and across time zones.”

Jiten Arora, Regional Head of Transaction Banking, Southern Asia, Standard Chartered Bank said: “This appointment as clearing bank for Singapore Mercantile Exchange reflects our position as leading clearing bank for exchanges in Singapore. We have developed special capabilities to provide extended processing hours and timely reporting to Singapore Mercantile Exchange and their clearing members.”

SMX is Asia’s first multi-product global commodity derivatives exchange, offering a state of the art electronic platform for trading futures and options contracts in commodities including precious metals, base metals, energy, agriculture, currency pairs and commodity indices. SMX will aim to synchronise derivatives and physical trading within the Asian time zone, while offering new derivatives products necessary for effective risk management in the Asian region.

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