Tradeweb Markets and EuroCCP announced a strategic collaboration to facilitate central counterparty clearing for European Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). It is expected to streamline European clients’ settlement process and minimize costs, by facilitating pre-settle margin and netting of exposures, while still offering pan-European ETF investors the transparency and benefits afforded by the RFQ process.
“By offering our clients the ability to centrally clear European ETF trades, we are enhancing the RFQ workflow by introducing a new post-trade process to help investors minimize settlement fails and improve efficiency,” said Enrico Bruni, head of Europe and Asia business at Tradeweb, in a statement.
With regulators aiming to harmonize rules under the European Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR), market participants will soon be subject to new Settlement Discipline procedures, including cash penalties for settlement fails and mandatory buy-ins. By offering access to central clearing and settlement services via EuroCCP within the trading workflow, Tradeweb will help clients navigate these new rules and mitigate counterparty risk for clearing participants.
“Introducing CCPs to ETF trading on Tradeweb’s RFQ platforms is an important market structure enhancement, improving the clearing, settlement and utility of ETFs,” said Jason Warr, head of Global Markets at BlackRock iShares, in a statement.