CME Interest Rate Chief Resigns, Effective At Year's End

The chief of CME Group Inc.'s (CME) interest rate product group for the past five-and-a-half years is leaving the company at the end of this year, CME reported Monday.

Robin Ross will leave her post at year's end as CME's managing director of interest rate products to "ensure a seamless transition," CME said in a news release.

She will be replaced by Sean Tully, who led the credit and fixed income trading group at WestLB, a Germany-based commercial banking firm. He had worked at WestLB's London office. He will take on his new responsibilities in CME's New York office.

Ross was based at CME's Chicago headquarters. During her tenure, Ross worked on the merger between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

Through the link-up with CBOT, CME was able to add heavily traded U.S. Treasury futures and federal-funds futures to its interest-rate product line.

CME's core interest-rate product is Eurodollar futures, which is tied to expectations for the three-month London Interbank Offered Rate. The Libor represents the cost of borrowing U.S. dollars in the London interbank offered, and is considered a benchmark for determining borrowing costs for businesses and households.

CME is the dominant exchange for rate futures trading, but it has faced increased competition in recent years. Bank-financed challenger ELX Futures LP and NYSE Euronext Inc. (NYX) have listed products modeled after CME's Eurodollar and Treasury contracts.

Ross did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Her replacement, Tully, will report to Derek Sammann, who is CME's director of foreign exchange and interest rate products.

-By Howard Packowitz, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4132; howard.packowitz@dowjones.com

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