On the panel were Steve Auerbach, president of SunGard Futures Systems, Sharon Brown-Hruska, commissioner at Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Bob Gaffney, MD of global futures at ABN Amro, Joe Raia, SVP of marketing at New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), Ken Raisler, partner and head of Sullivan and Cromwell's commodities, futures and derivatives group, and Mark Rzepczynski, president and CIO of John W Henry.
There was a broad consensus about the potential gains to be made from cross-asset clearing, though opinions differed when it came to discussion of how achievable advances were and how broadly the model could be applied.
Nonetheless, Auerbach summed up the mood by claiming that cross-asset clearing in the derivatives world represents the biggest shift that the industry has witnessed in the last 30 years, or since the birth of financial futures in the early 1970s.
From an end user's perspective, Rzepczynski explained that portfolio margining...