Given the record growth in our industry, which regions and asset classes will lead in 2025 and beyond?
In recent years, exchanges in India, Brazil and the US have seen record growth and are likely to continue leading. However, Europe has significant upside potential. Amid recent geopolitical dynamics, global investors are increasingly looking for ways to diversify into Europe and the euro. This trend towards “de-dollarisation” may take time, but the demand is growing.
Eurex is ready to lead the way. Our comprehensive product offering across asset classes and attractive services provide significant capital efficiencies. Strategically positioned across time zones, Eurex is an excellent single source of liquidity for clients. We support clients with EMIR 3.0 compliance and offer deep liquidity pools. In 2025, volatility levels and the overall macroeconomic environment is expected to favour risk assets where Eurex’s index and equity derivatives are well positioned to benefit. Eurex is also well-positioned to facilitate institutional access to crypto markets and offers MSCI index futures and options for economic divergence views.
What do you see as the biggest risk to continued growth in trading volume?
At Eurex, we have a responsibility to support the sustainable growth of our clients and the economy. In Europe, we have great challenges in the context of our capital markets environment, which is fragmentation around tax regimes, pension schemes or different regulatory regimes across jurisdictions.
It is our strategic objective to help our clients deal with fragmentation by lowering any connectivity barriers and maximising accessibility to our markets. One recent example is our Home Market Settlement project, which addresses fragmentation of the post-trade landscape by offering clients the ability to settle at their home central securities depository, while trading at Eurex. This new structure reduces manual input, costs and the risk of settlement delays and failures. We have received positive feedback since its launch on 23 September 2004, with trading volumes increasing and more banks onboarding. We are now preparing for further expansion.
Have regulators struck the appropriate balance between addressing risk and promoting innovation?
The development of the regulatory landscape in financial services is a continuous process. Increasing regulation following the financial crisis of 2008 has helped to stabilise markets, enabling them to handle the crises of recent years well. However, there is a possibility that excessive requirements can hinder innovation.
We welcome the fact that the regulatory agenda is evolving and that the EU wants to reduce bureaucracy and inefficiencies to promote its innovative strength and competitiveness. Ensuring a level playing field will be crucial to preventing regulatory arbitrage and maintaining fair competition across markets. I strongly believe that collaboration between regulators and industry participants is key here. Only by working together, can we ensure regulatory frameworks are fit for purpose. That means robust yet flexible, allowing innovation to thrive while safeguarding financial market integrity.
And thinking about innovation, which technology advances offer the most opportunity looking forward?
As an exchange organisation, our primary objective must be to provide our customers with the most efficient and reliable platform, supported by deep liquidity and competitive prices, ensuring best execution and minimising capital costs. Efficiency plays a crucial role, and that’s where technology comes in.
Our powerful, state-of-the-art trading and clearing technology leverages the immense efficiencies offered by the combination of our trading and clearing capabilities across multiple asset classes through portfolio and cross margining. This is a focus for the benefit of our clients, as it enables efficient trading without compromising on risk management for the clearinghouse and its members. We invest heavily in the latest technologies to continuously innovate and improve the trading and clearing experience.
Looking ahead, we are excited about the potential of artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain technology to transform trading strategies, unlock advanced analytics and revolutionise risk management and settlement processes.
What is the biggest challenge ahead for your exchange or for the industry as a whole?
The biggest challenge for our exchange and the financial industry is to strike the right balance between innovation and ensuring secure, resilient markets. While continuing to innovate, we must ensure that our markets remain safe and robust, providing confidence and stability for all participants.
This includes investing the right amount of resources and skills in maintaining complete cyber resilience. Protecting against operational risk is critical to maintaining the high standards we have established as an industry. I am optimistic about the future because our commitment to excellence and adaptability will drive us to meet these challenges and succeed in an evolving landscape.
Given the rapid pace of new products introduced in 2024, which three excite you most?
Eurex is the single point of entry for the world’s most diversified portfolio of equity and index derivatives, which we expanded in 2024. Our dividend segment now includes Mid-Curve Options on Euro STOXX 50 Index Dividend Futures, focusing on the next five years of dividends for better risk management.
We are building out our STOXX Europe 600 ecosystem, listing weekly expiries to meet growing institutional demand. Additionally, we introduced Daily Options on Euro STOXX and DAX already in 2023, the first of their kind in Europe.
Eurex also offers new US dollar credit index futures, becoming the first exchange with a truly global offering of fixed income index futures across currencies and geographies. Our STIR futures bring together the long and short ends of the curve, interest rate swaps and repos in a one-pot margin approach, maximising efficiencies for clients.
What more can the industry do to improve diversity in financial markets?
Eurex is part of Deutsche Börse Group. As a global company, we employ more than 14,000 people with diverse cultural backgrounds. And not just because of the 60 locations around the world. During my first weeks in Germany, I was amazed at the variety of languages you hear across the floors. To be honest, I didn’t expect that. Our diversity extends beyond nationality to professional backgrounds and individual personalities. We are committed to recognition, appreciation, fairness, inclusion and openness.
What more can we do? It is key to lead by example and bring out the diversity in our teams. To do this, we must not only promote authenticity but also role model it. If we are honest, it often falls by the wayside in our fast-paced industry and the pressures we face. That’s what we can all work on.
What was the most interesting film or play you saw in 2024?
I wish I could say… My time at Eurex since I first joined on 1 May last year has been truly exceptional. Not only did Michael Peters, my esteemed predecessor as CEO of Eurex, put me through an extremely intensive onboarding programme, but it was also important to me to get back in touch with customers as quickly as possible. I visited over 100 customers in person in Europe, Asia and the US to hear their views on how we can make our market even better and help them achieve their goals. As for your question, I watched just as many movies on those countless flights, but to be honest, I can’t tell you what I saw because most of the time I fell asleep right away.
What was the best book you read in 2024?
I just read Alexei Navalny’s book “Patriot: A Memoir” over the holidays. His commitment to democracy, free elections, and human rights, and his willingness to make sacrifices, remind us how important it is to stand up for our beliefs and actively participate in shaping our society. He demonstrates the importance of having a clear vision, making bold decisions and motivating your team even in difficult times. Navalny’s perseverance and belief in the good can encourage us to be resilient in our own lives and never give up.
Amid all the changes we are experiencing on all levels, I also found Hiro Arikawa’s “The Traveling Cat Chronicles” very inspiring. The book emphasises that life is not only about big goals, but also about the small moments and encounters along the way. I think we can all learn from that – also in our industry, sometimes a pause for reflection and appreciation of what we have achieved brings more value than a push to achieve the next objective on the list.
