With Europe’s exchange takeover wars entering the endgame, attention is shifting to India, home to two of the world’s most fascinating exchange projects: the truly innovative Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), which broke all the rules of IT when it launched a Windows-based trade-matching engine three years ago at a fraction of the cost of what legacy exchanges pay; and the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), which has been slowly building up a loyal customer base.
Both have attracted foreign investment (Fidelity has a stake in MCX, while Goldman Sachs has a stake in NCDEX); both are talking to other Western partners; and both are planning to float shares in 2007. What’s more, the Forward Markets Commission says it will release guidelines for allowing foreign access to India’s commodity exchanges some time in January, making the diverse range of products traded available to U.S. retail traders.
