Equinix Strengthens London Ecosystem as CME Expands

equinix-fiber-tray

The cabling in these trays at an Equinix data center reflects the dense connectivity found in the company's financial trading hubs. Today the CME Group said it was expanding with Equinix in the London market. (Image: Equinix)

Equinix is reinforcing its financial ecosystem in the London market, as the derivatives marketplace CME Group is establishing a Globex hub inside the Equinix LD4/LD5 campus in Slough, scheduled to open in May 2013. Locating the CME hub at Equinix places CME Group's business in close proximity to Europe’s leading trading platforms and electronic trading customers.

CME Group exchanges offer trading across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate. The group brings buyers and sellers together through its CME Globex electronic trading platform and its trading facilities in New York and Chicago.

Approximately 25 percent of CME Group’s electronic trading volume comes from outside the United States, primarily from the EMEA (Europe-Middle East-Africa) region. “We continue to see growing demand from our customers based throughout Europe for our product offerings, which means that we also need to focus on building our infrastructure and technology capabilities in the region,” said William Knottenbelt, managing director EMEA, CME Group.

Community of Potential Customers

By choosing Equinix, CME Group further aligns with its regional customers and gets access to an expansive community of potential customers located inside Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data center. Customers interested in connecting to the CME Globex hub simply need to acquire space in Equinix’s LD4/LD5 campus and cross-connect to the platform or lease a line.

It’s another case of customers begetting customers on the part of colocation players, and Equinix’s strength in the financial vertical means customers are eager to get in the same ecosystem as like-minded businesses.

"In today’s evolving market, exchanges want to reach the largest trading community with the lowest infrastructure costs, using data centers already well-populated with their target customers," said Stewart Orrell, managing director of Global Financial Services at Equinix. "Equinix is the only network-neutral data center provider that’s able to meet these needs globally, and CME Group will be a uniquely powerful addition to the thriving financial ecosystem inside Equinix."

New market regulations across Europe are driving the movement of derivatives to trade on exchanges, resulting in trade processing through central clearing houses and data being reported and housed in trade repositories. Over the past few years, Equinix has built a cross-asset class business which is well-positioned to meet the demands of the evolving algorithmic trading market and its growth into additional asset classes such as FX and derivatives.