European structured products exchange Scoach has reported a trading volume of €62bn in Zurich and Frankfurt in 2011.
"Stock exchange turnover grew for the first time since 2008 to over €62 billion ...We have also set new records for the number of listed products, both in Frankfurt and Zurich," said Christian Reuss, CEO Scoach Switzerland. "We now aim to reinforce Scoach's international character further still. Investors from 18 countries can already trade with us. The discussions on connecting new market participants in Hong Kong are progressing well and we are confident that we will see the first transactions on our platform in the coming months."
Turnover in Frankfurt was €19.6bn in 2011, which represents a year-on-year increase of 8.6% or 2.7m executed transactions. In the German market the number of products listed rose to 780,000 by the end of 2011 (a 50% increase year-on-year) with up to 6,000 securities admitted to trading each day including a growing number of collateral secured instruments (COSI) which minimise issuer risk for investors. In Germany, Scoach introduced the Hong Kong dollar as a trading currency.
In addition, trading volumes in the Swiss market rose by 31% in 2011 to CHF51.8bn (€42.4bn). According to Scoach, asset managers and institutional clients in particular are making increasing use of regulated stock exchange trading when investing in structured products. The number of listings grew by 27% to over 52,000 products. In October Scoach also introduced trading of structured products using gold as the trading currency, expanding the selection of trading currencies to 24.
Reuss also highlighted the announcement made back in mid-November when the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) licensed the exchange to connect market players in Hong Kong directly to its Xetra trading system allowing advisers and broker-dealers to use the Xetra network to place structured product orders for trading on Scoach.