The London Metal Exchange (LME) has plans to raise participation in its platinum and palladium fixes, Matthew Chamberlain, head of business development at the LME, said.
“As an administrator, we do want to grow participation,” he told FastMarkets.
The LME won the administration of the platinum and palladium price fixes in October 2014. The LME’s custom-built electronic solution, LMEbullion, provides the pricing methodology for the benchmarks.
The prices are published twice daily and consist of outright prices for platinum and palladium in dollars, euros and sterling.
“We have a good pipeline of four players who want to join. I’d be disappointed if by the end of the year we haven’t added at least a couple,” Chamberlain said.
Current member participants are BASF Metals, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Johnson Matthey and Standard Bank.
“The five participants we have bring the global balance of platinum and palladium market to the auction process… [While] there is no immediate pressure to have more members, we would like to have more,” he said.
Chamberlain described the other interested parties as “a nice mix of both Western and Asian potential participants”.
Another method that the LME is looking at to expand participation is the provision of the capacity for clients to participate directly in the fixing process, a model called “direct client login”, Chamberlain said.
“At the moment, if I am a client, I’d be on a phone to the PGM participant during the pricing process putting orders over the phone, while the participant is looking at the LME screen,” he said. “But we have made direct client access available – a client of a participant can place orders directly into the system.”
There is already interest from clients to sign up to this model, Chamberlain added.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)
The post LME plans to boost PGM price benchmark participation – Chamberlain appeared first on The Bullion Desk.
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Source: Bullion Desk News
