STATEMENT OF MR. CHRISTOPHER FIX, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific for CME Group.

Monday 18 June 2018 12:11
Good morning,

Dr. Kritcharat Hirunyasiri, Chairman of Executive Board of MTS Gold Group Ltd;

Mr.Nuttaphong Hirunyasiri, Chief Executive Officer of MTS Gold Group Ltd;

The senior management team of MTS; Members of the media; Ladies and gentlemen; Esteemed guests.

It is my pleasure to be here today, to be invited by MTS Gold Group to officiate and to deliver a speech at the opening ceremony of the MTS Global Trading Expo.

My name is Christopher Fix, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific for CME Group.

CME Group is where the world comes to manage risk. We have nearly two centuries of experience operating highly regulated and deeply liquid markets so that investors all over the world can either transfer or take on risk to run their businesses. Every major investible asset class is available on our exchanges. We help airlines fly more flights, banks write more loans and even farmers produce more of what you ate for breakfast today.

CME Group operates global futures and options markets with trading, clearing and reporting infrastructure based in North America and Europe. In the U.S., we operate four futures and options exchanges – CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX. Our exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate.

Our clearing division operates a U.S. based clearing house, CME Clearing, that provides central counterparty clearing services for futures, options and OTC derivatives. We also operate trade reporting facilities based in the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia that provide reporting services for futures, options, and OTC derivatives.

We have recently accelerated the growth of our business in the region, and in the fourth quarter of last year we opened our seventh Asia Pacific office in Sydney. And we now have an increased regional presence, including offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo, where we work closely with our diverse customer base to serve its specific risk management and investment requirements.

Asia's growing influence in global markets can be seen from the rise in trading volumes from a region which now accounts for 60 percent of the world's economic growth. For the full year 2017, CME Group's average daily volume (ADV) from Asia Pacific-based investors was 664,000 contracts, representing a 5 percent year-on-year increase. This was driven by interest rates, foreign exchange and metals products, all of which saw double digit growth.

In the first quarter of this year, CME Group reached an all-time high quarterly international average daily volume of 4.7 million contracts, up 38% over the same period last year. This corresponds to our global all-time high quarterly average daily volume of 22.2 million contracts during first quarter 2018.

More importantly, we have been seeing swathes of liquidity during Asian trading hours (from 8am to 8pm Bangkok time), not just from Asian but global participants. The average daily volume for futures and options traded on CME Group exchanges hit 2.2 million contracts in 2017, with a 3-year compound annual growth rate of 9 percent.

For CME Group, Thailand currently ranks third in the Southeast Asia region, just behind Singapore and Malaysia in terms of trading volume. That said, trading volumes from Southeast Asia still lag behind those from North Asia.

However, what this means is that there is still lots of room for us to grow our trading volumes from Thailand, as we continue to work hand in hand with partners here, such as MTS Gold Group to give Thai market participants access to the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace.

In terms of volumes, Thailand is also one of the fastest growing markets for CME Group in Asia. Year to date, we have seen volumes out of Thailand grow 50% over the same period a year ago. We are also seeing healthy demand from Thai market participants in terms of trading the various asset classes including metals, equity indexes, and interest rates.

And in May 2018, we have seen our volumes from Thailand up almost 50% compared to a year before, with the most widely traded asset classes being metals, which makes up more than half of all trading volumes from Thailand.

And now, working in close collaboration with MTS Gold Group, CME Group looks forward to bringing the global derivatives marketplace closer to customers of MTS Gold Group, and as we continue to play a key role in developing the derivatives markets in Thailand for Thai market participants.

With that, I would like to thank once again Dr. Kritcharat Hirunyasiri, Chairman of Executive Board of MTS Gold Group Ltd; Mr.Nuttaphong Hirunyasiri, Chief Executive Officer of MTS Gold

Group Ltd; and the team at MTS for their hard work and for the key role they have played in developing the local markets for derivatives trading.

I look forward to greater collaboration with MTS Gold Group as we continue to explore further opportunities to better serve the risk management needs of our mutual customers.

Thank you.