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Clearing Houses Case Study

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In a nutshell, clearing houses sit between buyers and sellers of financial instruments, reducing trading risks by ensuring one party gets paid even if the other party goes bust before the transaction can be fully completed. Clearing houses underpin the confidence of capital markets as they reduce counterparty exposure due to trading activity. Global regulators govern clearing activity through measures like section 723 of Dodd-Frank and EMIR, each of which have made central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) a critical part of the global capital markets infrastructure. Clearing is a key issue within Brexit deliberations because the UK is the center of the euro clearing world. It is estimated that more than 90% of euro-denominated interest …show more content…

As with most things relating to Brexit, political pressure within the EU favors pulling UK-dominated activities affecting the EU into EU member states. The ECB has already proposed changes to bring the UK under their direct supervision for clearing activity post-Brexit. Moving clearing out of London would not be a simple or inexpensive process. It would require significant new investment from all EU clearing members and a re-papering of thousands of contracts. The process would likely increase the costs of trading on a cleared basis, result in a reduced netting of positions in multiple currencies due to resulting fragmentation, and disrupt current global collateral arrangements. Because of this, several non-EU stakeholders, such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have weighed in on the debate. Both suggest that requiring euro clearing to move from the UK to the EU would harm the integrity and resilience of all financial markets. History Repeating Itself This is not the first time the EU and UK have debated the appropriate venue for clearing. In 2015, both faced off in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) where the EU argued euro clearing activity involving euro-denominated instruments should occur within the “Eurozone.” Among other things, the ECJ ruled that insisting the activity occur in a particular member state offended the principle of equality in

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