US exchange operator CME Group has hired Neil Pabari as its new Head of APAC Retail Sales and Distribution.
Pabari joins the company from LSEG Data and Analytics, which was previously called Refinitiv, prior to its acquisition by the London Stock Exchange Group in 2021.
The new Pabari executive spent almost 14 years at the firm and held a number of senior positions at the firm during that time.
That included working as Global Head of Focused Markets, Global Head of Corporate Sustainability Solutions, and – from the start of 2023 until his departure – as Head of Customer Connect for the APAC region.
CME Group pushing options to retail
CME Group has been trying to make more of a push for brokers to adopt options and futures trading outside of the US.
Over in the Land of the Free, retail adoption of exchange-traded derivatives products has been huge.
For example, US exchange operater Cboe published data in May of this year showing that the volume of zero-day options contracts traded has expanded five-fold in the last three years, with retail flow accounting up to 60% of total volumes.
However, exchanges do face something of an uphill battle outside of the US because of regulatory differences.
In the US, CFDs are effectively impossible to offer, although – unlike the UK and Europe – it does not treat rolling spot FX or crypto contracts as CFDs, meaning firms can still offer them.
The result is that brokers do not have the ability to offer more profitable leveraged contracts on popular underlying assets, whether it be gold, stocks, or indices.
In much of the rest of the world, brokers prefer to offer these products as they generate more revenue for the firm, compared to ETDs.
