By Tony Hallett, 19 August 1998 17:40
NEWS Members of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) are thought to have approved the introduction of an electronic trading system to run alongside pit-based open outcry, in a vote held yesterday. After seeing a leading brokerage, Cantor Fitzgerald, and the New York Board of Trade threaten to press ahead with an alternative electronic platform for the derivatives exchange - and potentially take away significant quantities of business - the CBOT board last month voted in favour of going digital. The success of the electronic Deutsche Termin Borse (DTB) in Frankfurt - now part of Eurex, a combined German-Swiss exchange, which also happens to be a likely international partner for CBOT - is thought to have swayed CBOT's members as it did the exchange's board. A CBOT spokeswoman declined to reveal the results of the vote. However, members are reported to have said the poll, like the board's vote, was overwhelmingly in favour of an electronic platform. The London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe) is also pressing ahead with an electronic platform, the first part of which should be in place this November. Liffe saw its share of the important German bund contract devastated over the last year due to electronic competition from DTB.
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