Citadel, CME Shutter CDS Platform, Bring In New Partners

Citadel Investment Group and the CME Group are scaling back their planned credit derivatives clearinghouse and bringing in new partners, after traders balked at using the two firms’ platform.

CMDX has been in business since March but has yet to clear a single trade, while a rival clearinghouse set up by the Intercontinental Exchange and backed by nine banks, has already built a dominant position in the credit-default swap clearing market. With the major Wall Street players directing all of their trades to a clearinghouse in which they had a hand, the CME-Citadel platform failed to attract any interest.