Cboe Formulates Global Blueprint for Derivatives

Catherine Clay has just finished her first 100 days in the newly created role of global head of derivatives at Cboe Global Markets. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, the first 40 days of Clay’s 100-day plan were a listening tour which involved sitting in client meetings and internal stakeholder meetings, which Clay described as, “just being a sponge. Part of my listening tour took me to other parts of the globe, and the resounding message that I heard was an appetite to get access to the US derivative markets. There is a lot of pent-up demand to participate in the uniquely US creation of very liquid transparent markets.” Cboe’s plan is to establish a presence in the equities market before moving into derivatives in the region. Clay said the same strategy in other regions can be used to achieve Cboe’s long-term goal of bringing uniformity to the global marketplace. “Typically, you land in the cash market, start building data pipelines, use that equity data to build indices, launch futures on the indices, launch options on those futures and add single stock contracts,” she added. “It really is a repeatable and scalable blueprint." Another blueprint for global expansion was provided in Clay’s previous role as global head of data and access solutions. In 2021, Cboe put its information solutions division together with its market data and access services division and put Clay in charge of the combined business. The rationale for the integration was that as Cboe expanded globally, customers would want greater efficiency in market infrastructure services and harmonized access to global data and analytics.