SINGAPORE (Commodity Online): Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) will offer Brent crude oi futures in additon to WTI Crude Oil contracts at the launch of the exchange in August this year.

With this development, SMX is closer to achieving its goal of being a premier single portal for trading key energy commodity derivatives within Asian time zone.

Currently, Singapore leads the way as Asia’s top energy trading hub due to its geographical positioning and established infrastructure. This makes SMX’ offering of Brent and WTI Crude Oil futures, a valuable proposition for the trading community.

Brent is widely used to price two thirds of the world's internationally traded crude oil supplies. It closely represents the supply and demand fundamentals, particularly, in the Asian region.

Thomas J. McMahon, Chief Executive Officer of SMX, commented: “Brent is the one of the most extensively used industry benchmarks to price oil. With robust growth in Asian economies, SMX expects growing interest amongst traders and investors to use this benchmark for their complex physical hedging and investment needs. For anyone with Euro related energy business, this contract would be a perfect hedge, alternatively companies with USD exposure could diversify its currency hedging requirements into the Euro denominated Brent Crude contract.” The Brent Euro cash settled futures contract will be traded in lots of 1,000 barrels each. Contracts can be traded for the current month and 11 consecutive months. The contract is priced in Euros per barrel, quoted to two decimal places. Trading hours will be from 1000 to 0330 hours (0230 hours during US daylight saving time) Singapore time from Monday to Friday. Last Trading Day for Brent crude contract on the SMX platform will be the first business day immediately preceding the 15th calendar day prior to the first calendar day of the maturing Contract Month.

SMX has received in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to operate Singapore’s first Asian multi-product commodity derivatives exchange. SMX announced earlier that the exchange will go live in August 2010 on its state-of-the-art electronic trading platform. The first phase of product launches will include a gold futures contract with physical delivery in high-security vaults in Singapore and the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude Oil, amongst the others, which will be announced soon.

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