Critical System Updates

·         Delisting of September 2012 Contract Months for Six Emissions Futures and Options Contracts and Contract Days through September 28, 2012 for the Daily Emission Contract

·         UPDATED: FECPlus Testing and Production Deployment Schedule

      Deliveries

·         List of Live Cattle Stockyards and Slaughter Plants

·         CME Group Delivery Dates for August, 2012

·         CME Group Delivery Dates for September, 2012

·         Deliveries Unit Fax Number Update

      Events & Announcements

·         NEW: Labor Day Holiday Clearing Schedule – Monday, September 3, 2012:

·         Green Exchange Product Migration to NYMEX August 27, 2012:

·         Trade Register Improvement for CME Group’s USDRMB Futures Contract

·         CME Clearing’s LSOC Implementation Plan

·         New Reporting Requirements Regarding Gross Customer Margining

·         Customer Gross Margining Update and Timelines

·         NEW Product Release- U.S. Midwest #1 Busheling Ferrous Scrap (AMM) Futures

·         Contact Information

As previously stated in Clearing House Advisory 12-225, dated May 29, 2012, the European Commission announced the full activation of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme single registry and the Union Registry transition period for the migration of accounts from national registries into a Union Registry. The Union Registry transition period is scheduled for the period beginning June 3, 2012 through June 20, 2012.

Although, the single registry is scheduled to be activated on June 20, the single registry will not contain all the required functionalities at that time. Transactions through the registry will be subject to a 26-hour delay. That delay will not be applicable to new account types (Trading Accounts) if they are included in a list of “trusted accounts”. According to the Union Registry, a full timetable will be communicated by July 15 with final date of implementation of delivery procedures scheduled for mid-September 2012.

Effective immediately, GreenX will delist the September 2012 contract month for its EUA, CER and ERU contracts. In addition, the Daily EUA contracts will remain delisted through contract day September 28, 2012. The contracts which will be delisted in accordance with the table below have no open interest.

These actions do not affect trading in any other futures or options products listed on CME Group.

If there are any questions, please contact:

Managing Director, Global Product Development
Henrik Hasselknippe
Tel: +44 20 7464 4182
E-mail: henrik.hasselknippe@thegreenx.com

Compliance Officer
Nicholas Galati
Tel: +1 212 299 2569
E-mail: nicholas.galati@thegreenx.com

CME Clearing will postpone several FECPlus implementation dates in order to allow time for additional testing. Following is the UPDATED deployment schedule for FECPlus in chronological Order:

·         Testing for ALL post-trade processing, including give-ups, average-priced give-ups, and cross-exchange allocations, using the FPL-compliant FIXML 5.0 API, is currently available in New Release.

·         Testing for the migration of CME ClearPort trades to FECPlus for CME Clearing Europe (CMECE) is currently available in the CMECE Certification Test Environment (CMECE CERT). NO API messaging changes for these trades.

·         Testing for the migration of CME ClearPort and other Trading Platform trades to FECPlus for CME/CBT/NYMEX/COMEX is currently available in the Certification Test Environment (CERT). NO API messaging changes for these trades.

·         Thursday, June 28, 2012: Testing for the migration of CDS and OTCFX trades to FECPlus will begin in New Release. NO API messaging changes for these trades.

·         Monday, July 2, 2012: Production launch date for migration of CME ClearPort trades to FECPlus for CMECE. NO API messaging changes.

·         Monday, July 30, 2012: Production launch date for migration of CME ClearPort and other Trading Platform trades to FECPlus for CME/CBT/NYMEX/COMEX, including CDS and OTCFX. NO API messaging changes.

·         Tentatively scheduled for Mid-July: Testing for the migration of ALL post-trade processing to FECPlus for CMECE will begin in CMECE CERT using the FPL-compliant FIXML 5.0 API. At least one month of test time will be provided prior to launch.

·         Tentatively scheduled for Late August: Production launch date for migration of ALL post-trade processing to FECPlus for CMECE using the FPL-compliant FIXML 5.0 API.

·         Tentatively scheduled for Early October: Production launch date for migration of ALL post-trade processing, including give-ups, average-priced give-ups, and cross-exchange allocations to FECPlus for CME/CBT/NYMEX/COMEX using the FPL-compliant FIXML 5.0 API.

If you have any questions or require further information please contact CME Clearing at 312-207-2525 or ccs@cmegroup.com.

This link provides the stockyards and slaughter plants that have been approved for deliveries against the CME Group Live Cattle futures contract from February 1, 2012 through January 31, 2013. Delivery point information and contact numbers are listed for your reference.

This link provides the relevant delivery dates for August 2012 Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, Dubai Mercantile Exchange, COMEX and GreenX contracts.

This link provides the relevant delivery dates for September 2012 Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, Dubai Mercantile Exchange, COMEX and GreenX contracts.

Beginning September 1, 2012 the new CME Clearing Deliveries Unit Fax number will be 312-604-9457. Please use this number going forward for all CME Group Deliveries-related faxes. Please update your records to denote this new number as the previous number will be decommissioned in September. Thank you.

Should you have any questions, please contact Deliveries at 312.930.3172.

For updated trading schedules during the holiday, please refer to the links below.

CME Group Trading Floor

CME Globex

NYMEX Trading Floor

NYMEX ClearPort

Monday, September 3, 2012 is the Labor Day holiday, a US federal holiday. As such, it is quite typical of CME Clearing’s processing for most US federal holidays going forward:

An ‘Exchange holiday’:

· The Chicago and New York trading floors are closed.

· CME Globex will open normally on Sunday, September 2nd but will close at various times on Monday and then re-open on Monday at various times. Please check the CME Globex Labor Day Holiday Schedule above for specific times. Trades executed on CME Globex from Sunday to 10:30am Monday will clear as of business day Tuesday, September 4th.

· CME ClearPort will be open as normal. CDS and OTC FX trades will clear as of business day Monday, and trades in other CME ClearPort products will clear as of business day Tuesday, September 4th.

http://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/lookups/advisories/clearing/files/Chadv12-368.pdf

As previously announced, CME Group will be migrating all GreenX products to a CME Group exchange, delisting them from the Green Exchange and listing them on NYMEX. The date of this migration will occur on Saturday morning August 25^th for business date Monday, August 27^th.

The sole impact of this change to clearing and bookkeeping systems is that the exchange acronym of the various products will change from GEX to NYMEX. There are no product code changes, firm change or other impacts. There will cease to be a separate Green Exchange settlement price file, and the daily SPAN files will no longer contain data for a separate Green Exchange.

The change was made effective in the New Release testing environment on June 18th to enable firms to test their systems with this change. For more information please contact CME Clearing Operations at (312)-207-2525 or via email to ccs@cmegroup.com .

On Monday, October 15, 2012, CME Group will introduce an important enhancement to the clearing processing for its USDRMB futures contract – the USD Renminbi future with USD banking.

This is the CNY contract where the contract size is 100,000 USD, the price is quoted in CNY (Chinese Renminbi Yuan) per US dollar, and the settlement variation amounts are converted from CNY back to USD by dividing by the current spot exchange rate between CNY and USD.

Currently, the trade register report and data file for this product provide values in CNY. With the change, the values will be provided in USD, and attributes will be provided to drive the conversion of the variation amounts from one currency to another.

The goal is of this enhancement is to simplify bookkeeping processing and reconciliation for clearing firms. This methodology will be applied to other products in the future.

CME Group recognizes that with the Thursday, November 8, 2012 deadline for LSOC implementation fast approaching, it is important that the industry receive clear specifications from CME, sufficient to clarify important details of our implementation of LSOC. At the same time, CME remains committed to listening to the industry so that our implementation plan can incorporate sensible feedback to ease implementation burdens as much as reasonably possible.  

CME Group will implement LSOC in a two-phase process. As previously indicated, LSOC will apply to FCM clearing member firms of CME holding customer positions in cleared swaps.

The first phase will begin on Monday, November 5, 2012. In this initial period, LSOC will be implemented in an unallocated excess mode.

The second phase will begin on Monday, February 4, 2013. On that date, CME clearing firms may begin operating in a client-specific excess mode. Firms will have until Monday May 27, 2013 to complete the transition; beginning on that date, all CME clearing firms with customer positions in cleared swaps must operate in a client-specific mode.

http://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/lookups/advisories/clearing/files/Chadv12-360.pdf

The advisory at the link below details new reporting requirements for FCMs stemming from certain CFTC regulations going into effect on November 8, 2012. There are two inter-related functional areas: Customer Gross Margining (CGM) and LSOC (Legally Segregated, Operationally Commingled). Customer Gross Margining will apply both to products which are under the futures regulatory regime and to products which are classified as cleared swaps for regulatory purposes. LSOC will apply only to cleared swaps customer accounts.

http://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/lookups/advisories/clearing/files/Chadv12-139.pdf

Clearing Advisory 12-353 at this link details new reporting requirements and timelines for clearing firms stemming from CFTC regulations going into effect on November 8, 2012. Customer Gross Margining (CGM) will apply both to products which are under the futures regulatory regime and to products which are classified as cleared swaps for regulatory purposes. The original CME Group Clearing Advisory regarding CGM was published on March 29, 2012, and is Advisory Number 12-139.

There are three key dates that firms should keep in mind relating to Customer Gross Margining, as explained below: Tuesday September 4, 2012 – the date on which CME will begin accepting daily CGM data files from firms; Monday October 8, 2012 – the date by which all firms must be submitting daily CGM data files; and Monday November 5, 2012, when CME will go live with Customer Gross Margining (four days prior to the November 8 deadline.)

At this link is an advisory notice detailing contract specifications for the new U.S. Midwest #1 Busheling Ferrous Scrap (AMM) Futures contract.