Finance and Economics；Centrally cleared derivatives；Clear and present danger；
财经；集中清算衍生品交易；迫在眉睫的危机；

Clearing-houses may add danger as well as efficiency；
清算所的危险和效率料并行上升；

Stock exchanges have not been lucky in love recently. Deutsche Borse's proposed merger with NYSE Euronext was blocked by regulators in February. Romances between the exchanges of Singapore and Australia, and between the Toronto bourse and the London Stock Exchange (LSE), have also fizzled.
证券交易所近期的“联姻”不那么顺利。德国证券交易所（ Deutsche Borse）与纽约泛欧交易所集团（NYSE Euronext）的合并提议2月份被监管当局否决。而新加坡和澳大利亚证券交易所的联姻以及多伦多证券交易所和伦敦证券交易所（ LSE）的联姻也都已搁浅。

Tired of such dalliances, the LSE has taken up with the plumber. On April 3rd its shareholders backed its plan to take control of LCH.Clearnet, a big clearing-house. Clearing-houses are the back-room wizards of the exchange-traded securities and derivatives markets. They ensure that once a deal has been agreed upon it will be honoured, even if one of the parties goes bust. The 2008 financial crisis proved their worth. Interbank markets seized up because no bank knew how big a risk the other was carrying, but the clearing-houses had a much better idea of their exposures and could rapidly demand more cash or other collateral from counterparties.
LSE厌倦了此类周旋， 开始对“管道工”产生兴趣。4月3日该集团股东支持掌控LCH.Clearnet的计划，LCH.Clearnet是一家大型清算所（欧洲最大的衍生品独立清算所）。清算所是股票交易和衍生品市场的幕后向导。他们确保一旦交易达成，就会生效（即买卖双方分别与交易所发生关系），即使交易一方破产。2008年发生的金融危机证明了清算所的价值。银行间市场失灵，因银行不知彼此担负多大的风险，但清算所对其敞口却知之甚详，进而可快速的要求交易方提供更多现金或其他抵押品。

Regulators now want clearing-houses to act as central counterparties (CCPs) for as many derivatives transactions as possible. Their biggest target is the mountain of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives products, whose notional amounts outstanding, reckoned at around 700 trillion dollar in June 2011, easily dwarf the 83 trillion dollar of derivatives on exchanges.
目前监管当局想让清算所扮演中央对手方（CCPs）的角色，尽可能多的为衍生品交易进行清算。其最大的目标是大量的衍生品柜台交易（OTC），2011年7月OTC名义总值约达700万亿美元，而交易所的衍生品交易名义总值为83万亿美元，明显低很多。

Some OTC derivatives are already centrally cleared: LCH.Clearnet's Swap Clear service has 290 trillion dollar of interest-swaps on its books. Many are not. A G20 resolution in 2009 set a framework for moving standardised OTC products into clearing-houses. This is being applied through bits of legislation worldwide, most importantly via the Dodd-Frank Act in America and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) in Europe, which was voted through the European Parliament on March 29th. Any remaining bilateral deals would be much more expensive for banks to carry on their books.
部分衍生品柜台交易已被集中清算： LCH.Clearnet的掉期清算业务中利率掉期账面值达290万亿美元。但多数OTC衍生品交易并未进行清算。2009年颁布的一项20国集团决议为标准化OTC产品进入清算所制定了一个框架。这一框架可通过世界范围内的零星立法来实施，最重要的立法有美国的多德·弗兰克法案（Dodd-Frank Act）和欧洲的欧洲市场基础设施监管条例（EMIR），该条例于3月29日获欧洲议会投票通过。剩下的双边交易对银行来说都要昂贵得多。

All of which means that the volume of business flowing to clearing-houses, and the fees they can charge, will rise. For a stock exchange like the LSE, whose trading volume in cash equities is being eroded by much cheaper multilateral platforms, it makes sense to risk overpaying—the deal values LCH.Clearnet at around 800m (1.1 billion dollar)—to secure a business that is almost bound to grow by regulatory fiat.
所有这些都意味着流向清算所的业务量，及其收取的费用会增加。对于像LSE这样的证券交易所来说，其股票现货交易量将受到更便宜的多边交易平台打压，（因此）冒险多掏钱购入一项在监管法令下势必会增长的业务是有意义的。LSE购入LCH.Clearnet 股权的交易额约达8亿欧元（11亿美元）。

Others are also crowding round. NYSE Euronext's merger with Deutsche Borse would have plugged it into Eurex Clearing, the German exchange's CCP. Now it will work on making NYSE Liffe Clearing, which clears the trades on London's Liffe futures exchange, a full CCP. On March 28th it announced plans for its continental derivatives-clearing activity to migrate there by early 2014, subject to regulatory approval (its continental cash equities will continue to be cleared by LCH.Clearnet).
其他交易所亦前仆后继。纽约泛欧交易所集团与德国证券交易所的合并本可与欧洲期交所清算公司（ Eurex Clearing）拉上关系，欧洲期交所清算公司是德国证券交易所的CCP。目前纽约泛欧交易所集团将致力于打造泛欧交易所清算所（NYSE Liffe Clearing），该清算所清算伦敦国际期货金融交易所（Liffe）的期货交易，完全是一个CCP。3月28日LSE宣布计划在2014年初将其衍生品清算业务扩张至欧洲大陆，而这取决于监管当局的许可（其欧洲大陆股票现货交易将继续在LCH.Clearnet进行清算）。

This will create new concentrations of risk. If the CCPs consolidate into three or four big players in Europe, and a handful more worldwide, that will be a lot of risk tied up in a few institutions. Since they are involved in cross-border business and meant to be “interoperable”—ie, allowing access to a wide number of counterparties—the responsibility for the bail-out of a CCP may not be a clear-cut geographical one. All this should be sorted out before the game goes much further.
新风险集中将应运而生。如果欧洲的CCPs整合成三或四个大机构，全球则整合成稍多几个，那么大量风险就将会被集中在几个机构上面。因为这些机构的业务涉及跨境，意味着会“相互影响”，即业务向更广泛的交易方开放，那么要负责救助一个CCP，或许就不是地理上明确划分的那一个了。在进一步整合之前，所有这些问题都应解决。

Another looming problem is the quality of collateral that CCPs take. Apart from cash, the most common type of collateral posted with clearing-houses is government bonds. These no longer have the “risk-free” status they used to enjoy. As more deals migrate to CCPs, the pressure to find suitable collateral could intensify (by how much depends on the extent to which clearing enables offsetting transactions to reduce the amount of collateral needed). There is a risk that clearing-houses could expose themselves to assets which are not as stable as they should be.
另一个若隐若现的问题是CCP接受的抵押品质量问题。除现金外，清算所接受的最普遍抵押品是政府债券。而这些债券已不再是过去享有的“无风险”地位。随着更多交易转向CCP，其找寻合适抵押品的压力料加剧（这多少取决于哪一种清算令对冲交易削减所需抵押品数量的程度）。这就存在一种风险：清算所面临的资产敞口不如应该那样稳定。

Clearers swear blind that they would never relax their standards. “We're not plumbers, we're risk-management firms,” says Ian Axe, the boss of LCH.Clearnet. This is true, but it and many other CCPs are run for profit, and are bound to steer a course between risk and reward. The European Securities and Markets Authority is supposed to set new capital rules and collateral standards for CCPs by June 30th. What regulators give with one hand, they may take away with the other.
清算所誓言决不会放宽标准。LCH.Clearnet老板Ian Axe表示：“我们不是管道工，我们是风险管理公司”。虽然这是事实，但LCH.Clearnet和其他CCP都是逐利的公司，定会在风险和收益之间前行。欧洲证券与市场管理局（European Securities and Markets Authority, 简称ESMA）应在7月30日前为CCP制定新的资本规则和抵押标准。上有政策，也许下就有对策。