CME launches offshore RMB futures

The Chinese currency is making tracks overseas. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange rolled out its own RMB futures contract on Monday. The exchange expects that the fast growing currency will be used in more trade and investment deals.

Signalling a major step in the internationalization of China's currency, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Monday launched a new renminbi futures contract deliverable in Hong Kong bank accounts.

Derek Sammann, senior managing director of CME Group, said, "We're excited about the Chinese market and one of the ways we found opportunities to grow is responding to the steps the Chinese government has taken over the last two years to start to internationalize, very deliberately, the market for the renminbi."

The futures will be available in three-year contracts worth either $100,000 dollars - for large, institutional investors - or 10,000 dollars for retail customers. The offshore contracts will settle in renminbi daily as opposed to previous contracts that converted to dollars at the end of each day.

Derek Sammann said, "So with the growth of the offshore CNH or deliverable renminbi market. Speaking to our customers, they would like to have the opportunity to trade their futures products based on that offshore deliverable cash market."

Sammann said more than 130 of the new contracts - tagged with the CNH abbreviation - were bought on Monday.

This will be one of 56 futures currency futures contracts that the CME offers, which makes it the world's largest foreign currency exchange marketplace in the world, with an average daily value of more than 100 billion dollars.

Emerging markets currencies still make up for a small part of the CME's overall foreign exchange business, but it is also the fastest growing, says Sammann. The Exchange expects renminbi futures to grow considerably as the currency is used in more trade and investment.

At the end of 2010, when China piloted the CNH settlement program, deposits in Hong Kong were about 300 billion renminbi. By the end of last year, that figure had doubled.