Dubai Mercantile Exchange wins key industry innovation award

The DME received the 2009 award for the successful migration of trading of the DME Oman Crude Oil Futures Contract (DME Oman) and DME Oman Crude Oil Financial Contract to CME Group's Globex (CME Globex) platform. The move enhanced the global exposure of both DME contracts, not only making them easily accessible to customers in more than 80 countries but also opening up new possibilities for arbitrage and other sophisticated trading strategies on a single, virtually 24-hour platform.

The migration to CME Globex has made the world's three key crude oil benchmarks, DME Oman, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), and Brent, available for the first time on a single platform. The migration has contributed to significantly increased trading volumes, with the DME reporting a 58% year-on-year increase in DME Oman average daily volumes during 2009.

Commenting on the award, Ahmad Sharaf, Chairman of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, said:

"The DME is honoured to receive such recognition from our industry. The award acknowledges our collective efforts to connect our customers to a flexible and state-of-the-art trading platform that meets global customer requirements and ensures the greatest visibility and exposure of the DME Oman Contract. We were awarded the FOW 'Exchange Newcomer of the Year' award in 2008 and, one year on, a second award for excellence in customer service is a tribute to our growth as an Exchange."

Thomas Leaver, Chief Executive Officer, DME added, "This award is testament to our partners' continuing dedication to customer service. While we have seen records made and broken on the Exchange since our launch 29 months ago, the move to CME Globex was a tremendous boost for the DME and our customers. Immediately afterwards we saw a record high daily trading volume. Most recently, a new record average daily volume of contracts was achieved in October as our Oman contract gains ever growing market acceptance as the third global crude oil pricing benchmark."

In June 1992, CME launched CME Globex, a global electronic trading platform for the trading of futures and options on futures products. Initially implemented for after-hours trading, today CME Globex is available virtually 24 hours a day offering customers around the world the capability to trade all of CME Group's products. Through its 2008 acquisition of NYMEX, CME Group gained a 25% stake in the DME, which enabled it to launch the DME Oman Crude Oil Futures Contract and DME Oman Crude Oil Financial Contract for electronic trading exclusively on the CME Globex platform in February 2009. For more information, click here.

FOW is a leading trade publication read extensively by the global derivatives and risk management community and its annual awards seek to recognize innovation and excellence among derivatives exchanges and market participants around the world.