NYSE Liffe to Start CFTC-Style Reports on Cocoa, Sugar, Coffee Positions

NYSE Liffe will issue reports on positions in cocoa, coffee and sugar contracts traded in London in a format similar to those already produced for U.S. markets by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Exchange members will need to report all client positions above 100 lots in all delivery months on a daily basis, the bourse said in a notice dated yesterday and received by e-mail today. NYSE Liffe said it will aggregate client positions and share the information with regulators. A trial period, during which no reports will be published, starts Sept. 28.

The new reporting was adopted “in response to widespread market demand,” NYSE Liffe said. “This publication is intended to be similar in approach to the disaggregated, short-format Commitments of Traders Report, which is published to the market in the U.S.”

A group of 16 cocoa consumers wrote to the exchange on July 2 to complain about a lack of transparency, warning that they may transfer trading to ICE Futures U.S., according to a copy of the letter obtained by Bloomberg News. The consumers and NYSE Liffe officials met July 27 in London, and the bourse said it would talk to more clients before deciding whether to amend its rules.

NYSE Liffe’s July cocoa future expired at a 12 percent premium to the next available contract, and the bourse said 240,100 metric tons of beans were delivered into it, the most since 1996. Responding in a July 8 letter to the cocoa consumers, the exchange said it found no evidence of “abusive behavior.”

The new position reports will split clients into four categories. They include producer, merchant, processor, user; swap dealer; money manager; and other reportables. The exchange gave no date for starting publication of the reports.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Wallace in London at swallace6@bloomberg.net

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