European info squall to clear

At last, weather data is starting to become available in the European market, spurring growth in the weather derivatives market there. Paul Lyon reports

CDC Ixis Capital Markets has its own weatherman. In May, the French bank established a weather derivatives desk and, striving for innovation, employed a meteorologist on its four-person weather risk team.

Most weather risk dealers outsource their weather data requirements to third-party providers, who transform patchy, ‘raw’, meteorological (or ‘met’) office weather data into reliable figures through filling in any gaps – a process known as cleaning, which involves

advanced modelling and