Secretive start-ups eye uncleared OTC risk reduction

Dividing the over-the-counter market into cleared and uncleared products creates extra risk and inefficiency, critics claim – it also creates an opportunity for services that can repair the damage. Start-ups and established firms alike are now jockeying for position. By Duncan Wood

Outside a small circle of dealers, few people have heard of LMRKTS and NetOTC, but these secretive start-ups hope to become some of the biggest players in the reshaped over-the-counter derivatives market. They, along with established firms such as TriOptima and CLS Bank and a couple of other players currently unwilling to show their hands, are vying to recreate the risk efficiencies lost in the move to mandatory central clearing, which breaks up currently offsetting positions and subjects them