Eurex

What Is the Eurex?

The Eurex (or Eurex Exchange) is one of the largest futures and options markets in the world. It deals primarily with European-based derivatives but provides electronic access to traders connected from more than 700 locations around the world.

Eurex is located near Frankfurt, Germany. It is part of the Eurex Group and is now owned by Deutsche Börse AG, an exchange and transaction services provider that enables access by investors and financial institutions to global capital markets.

Understanding the Eurex

Although it is best known as a market for derivatives, the products that trade on the Eurex range include European bonds, stocks, and stock indexes.

Along with facilitating trading in various derivatives instruments, Eurex also provides clearing and contract settlements. The exchange settles more than 1.6 million of these contracts annually. Its fully electronic network is considered one of the best and most innovative in the world.

Contracts and transactions that are settled on the Eurex are cleared through Eurex Clearing, which serves roughly 200 members in 19 countries.

A Brief History of the Eurex

The Eurex was founded in 1998 as a joint partnership between Deutsche Börse AG and the SIX Swiss Exchange. It was the time during which the traditional open outcry system was being taken over by electronic trading systems. The Eurex was one of the first exchanges to offer fully electronic trading to its users.

Deutsche Börse AG became the sole owner of the Eurex in 2012 when it purchased all of SIX's Eurex shares.

The exchange is dominated by derivatives trading. Derivatives are financial instruments that do not represent ownership of the underlying assets but rise or fall in value in tandem with the market price of those assets. Stock options are examples. They are not investments in stock shares. They are investments in the option to buy or sell a number of shares by a future date.

The Eurex exchange offers a variety of such products including interest rate derivatives, equity derivatives, dividend derivatives, foreign exchange derivatives, commodity derivatives, and property derivatives.

The Eurex Trading Technology

The Eurex uses a trading platform technology called T7, which was developed by Deutsche Börse Group. The same system is used by the European Energy Exchange (EEX) and Powernext for derivatives trading.

Cash trading is done through the T7 system by the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FRA), the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE), and the Vienna Stock Exchange (WBAG).

Eurex Management

As of 2021, key management personnel at Eurex included: