PrintPrint EmailEmail ShareShare CiteCite   Turquoise promise:
to unclog European trading  Author: Benn Steil, Senior Fellow
and Director of International Economics May 8, 2007 Financial
Times   The mysteriously monikered Project Turquoise sent a
shiver through the European exchange world last month by
announcing that the big-bank-backed trading platform had chosen
its plumbers: the US-based Depository Trust and Clearing
Corporation for trade clearing and Citigroupfor settlement.
(Broadly, clearing reduces the number of transactions by netting
trades across participants and settlement consummates them.)
Much like my itinerant parents who cannot occupy their new
Florida home until the water pipes are working, traders cannot
move orders to Turquoise until the clearing and settlement pipes
are in place. This is a big deal in Europe, where lack of common
or interoperable trade plumbing has been the biggest barrier to
the emergence of an efficient pan-European trading market.  The
US exchange world has had a singl