Why can't we all just get along? Cross-border alliances among exchanges, clearinghouses and regulators have turned the concept of competition on its head and enabled even the lowliest of us to act like global hedge funds. But all of it could hit the skids unless someone figures out how to adequately compensate technology providers.(trade trends)

Futures (Cedar Falls, Iowa), April, 2005 by Zwick, Steve

"We need to stop beating the hell out of each other," says Robert Ray, senior VP in charge of business development for the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). "We need to stop trying to take markets away from each other and instead focus on helping end users access each other's liquidity pools--so I should be able to access Eurex's, and they should be able to access ours!"

He points to the CBOT's sub-licensing of its LiffeConnect access to the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade last December as an example of how we can all get along. "Now you have the four largest grain exchanges in North America running on one platform," he says. "All price data go through the CBOT's quote vendor network, and every...

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