CME Group Inc - Class A Shares (CME)

CME Group Inc., incorporated on August 2, 2001, through its exchanges, provides products across all asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. The Company's segment primarily consists of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME), Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. (CBOT), New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (NYMEX) and Commodity Exchange, Inc. (COMEX) exchanges. The Company provides electronic trading around the globe on its CME Globex platform. The Company also offers clearing and settlement services across asset classes for exchange-traded and over-the-counter derivatives through its clearinghouses CME Clearing and CME Clearing Europe. It also provides hosting, connectivity and customer support for electronic trading through its co-location services.

The Company's CME Direct platform offers side-by-side trading of exchange-listed and privately negotiated markets. It provides clearing and settlement services for exchange-traded contracts, as well as for cleared swaps, and provides regulatory reporting solutions for market participants through its global repository services in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Finally, it offers a range of market data services, including live quotes, delayed quotes, market reports and a historical data service. Its products provide a means for hedging, speculation and asset allocation relating to the risks associated with, among other things, interest rate sensitive instruments, equity ownership, changes in the value of foreign currency, credit risk and changes in the prices of agricultural, energy and metal commodities. Its products are traded primarily through CME Globex and other electronic trading platforms, by open outcry auction market in Chicago, and through privately negotiated transactions that it clears. Its products generate information regarding prices and trading activity. It also offer customers detailed historical market data for use in their development and analysis of various trading strategies.

The Company operates two clearing houses: CME Clearing (a division of CME) and CME Clearing Europe. CME Clearing marks open positions to market at least twice a day, and requires payment from clearing firms whose positions have lost value and makes payments to clearing firms whose positions have gained value. For select cleared-only markets, positions are marked-to-market daily, with the capacity to mark-to-market frequently as market conditions warrant. The CME ClearPort front-end system provides access to its clearing services for block transactions and swaps. Its CME Globex electronic platform is the trading engine for its central limit order book markets, and is available on a global basis around the clock throughout the trading week. The CME Globex platform is accessible through a range of vendor provided and custom built trading systems that benefit from its open application programming interface approach. For privately negotiated markets, it offers brokers and customers the CME Direct platform for arranging, executing, recording and risk-managing trades. CME Direct includes CME One for mobile access, CME Messenger for instant-message capabilities and CME Straight-Through Processing. CME Straight-Through Processing enables direct connectivity for trade information directly with customer order management and risk management systems. It also offers co-location services at a data center facility, which houses its trading match engines for all products traded on the CME Globex electronic trading platform.

The Company competes with Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, Deutsche Borse AG, LCH.Clearnet Ltd., the Options Clearing Corporation, and Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.