The thick crust of public silence covering the lava flows reshaping LCH.Clearnet cracked a little this week when Garry Jones, head of global derivatives at NYSE Euronext Liffe, spoke out against the bid by a consortium of banks led by Icap.
He called them “a narrow group of shareholders” and said the deal would not serve “the best interest of the market as a whole”.
NYSE Euronext owns 5% of LCH.Clearnet and Jean-François Théodore, deputy CEO, sits on the board.
Jones told the Financial Times that Liffe “would prefer a more balanced ownership of LCH.Clearnet” and that it “certainly wouldn’t prefer a narrow consortium”.
He had little more enthusiasm for an idea floated by LCH.Clearnet, to buy out its existing 121 shareholders and sell itself back to users. LCH.Clearnet is owned at the moment 73.3% by users, 10.9% by exchanges and 15.8% by Euroclear. Observers have...