As CME Group looks to bring its cash, futures and clearing offerings closer together than ever before, 2026 is a pivotal year for BrokerTec. In January 2026, CME Group appointed Matthew Gierke as Global Head of BrokerTec. With nearly 20 years experience at the firm, Matt has worked across a wide range of CME Group business lines, including FX, interest rates, credit, data products, and OTC solutions.
Most recently Matt led the developed currencies team within the FX business and was instrumental in the EBS cash markets migration onto the firm’s Globex electronic trading platform.
He also worked on the launch of new products such as FX Spot+ and FX Link, which bridge CME Group’s futures and cash markets.
“BrokerTec plays a critical role in global repo as a foundation of liquidity formation and price discovery through our US and European central limit order books and our global request for quote platform ‘BrokerTec Quote’”, notes Gierke. “What makes this moment truly pivotal are the shifts underway — from the US Treasury clearing mandate to the broader evolution of both the cash and repo markets. The timing is perfect.”
In his new role, Gierke will work to further integrate BrokerTec within CME Group’s broader fixed income ecosystem — including its rates, futures, options, and multi-asset clearing offerings.
He continues: “As these markets evolve, there is a massive opportunity to unlock value across our entire fixed income franchise. Our intention is to provide clients with a frictionless, holistic ecosystem that unlocks greater capital efficiency, deeper liquidity, and a streamlined trading experience across cash, futures, and OTC swaps.”
Tackling the US Treasury clearing mandate
The cash US Treasury and repo market is undergoing a historic shift as the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) central clearing mandate approaches its final implementation phases — with the cash Treasury transactions deadline being 31 December 2026 and rules around US Treasury repo transactions coming into effect on 30 June 2027.
As the largest cash Treasury and repo platform in the market, BrokerTec says it is at the epicentre of this transition, with clients already clearing through LCH in Europe and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) in the US.
Discussing how the firm is working with clients on the upcoming mandate, Sara Carter, global head of Repo at BrokerTec, says: “We are deeply engaged with both buy side and sell side clients to help them navigate and capitalise on these new clearing opportunities, within the US and globally. As the central marketplace where the market comes to execute their financing and funding needs, we are focused on supporting our clients in their trading evolution. If they require expanded connectivity to clearing houses, we will partner with them to deliver it.”
In a highly anticipated development for the industry, the DTCC and CME Group secured landmark regulatory approvals from the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in April to launch their expanded cross-margining arrangement. Long sought after by market participants ahead of looming US Treasury clearing mandates, the expanded framework allows end-user clients of dually-registered broker-dealers and futures commission merchants (FCMs) to offset eligible positions across both clearing houses — reducing margin requirements, freeing up capital, and improving liquidity.
CME Group’s interest rates business, as it exists today, delivers circa US$25 billion in margin savings, amplified by approximately US$11 billion in daily savings from its Interest Rates Swaps Portfolio Margining programme. The enhanced CME-FICC cross-margining adds another layer of efficiency, contributing over US$1 billion in additional daily savings by allowing firms to manage treasury and repo activity alongside futures.
“The expansion of that offering will allow customers of CME Group and FICC to realise efficiencies that weren’t possible before, which will be critical as customers come into the clearing mandate or operate in a more broadly cleared world,” Gierke states. “The broad suite of assets that CME Group brings to the fixed income space allows us to act as a leader in delivering these critical margin and capital efficiencies. As the clearing network expands to include a much broader set of participants, our ability to deliver true capital optimisation and drive market innovation is greater than ever.”
“Our focus is on delivering innovation and value for our customers as they make this adjustment,” Gierke adds. “From the BrokerTec perspective, we are minimising change and operational impact to how they interface with us for trading — whether via our repo central limit order books, US Treasury CLOB, or our BrokerTec Quote platform.”
When it comes to central clearing, it is not simply a topic for those in the US. Europe and the UK remain much more fragmented markets, notes Carter, and there are great strides being taken in both regions. For Carter, this highlights a need to have a more accessible infrastructure for clearing, and while BrokerTec currently provides connectivity, any future mandates in Europe and the UK will most likely take into account lessons learnt from the US implementation.
A transformational time for repo
The global repo market has surged to record-breaking heights in 2026, with the US market expanding into a US$12.6 trillion daily ecosystem and Europe reaching a milestone €13.65 trillion outstanding — a 24.6 per cent annual increase. This explosion in volume is fueled by the need to finance roughly US$2 trillion in net new US Treasury issuance annually, alongside a rapid post-quantitative tightening (QT) migration of cash in Europe.
Beyond the immediate pressure of new clearing mandates, BrokerTec notes that this sheer scale is forcing a long-overdue structural modernisation, shifting the market toward a more open, digital model which in time will likely replace fragmented, 1980s-era plumbing.
Arguably, the repo market is at a transformation point, notes Carter. Central banks are increasingly focused on using repo, while the wider marketplace is growing in its understanding of how these applications can service their clients. Consequently, BrokerTec is focusing heavily on electronification to drive access and operational efficiencies.
“Firms previously viewed repo simply for financing or covering a short,” Carter notes. “Now, facing multiple regulatory constraints, every sell side bank must consider the most efficient use of collateral across the marketplace. There is a changing balance between liquidity risk and credit risk.”
Carter continues: “The way that capital regulations impact one bank’s balance sheet differs from another, causing them to manage collateral to optimise for each regulation.
The market is getting smarter with that and executing trades accordingly. As we increase the efficiency of electronic execution, it ensures the building blocks of traditional finance are stable, efficient, and accurate.
This allows the industry to start exploring distributed ledger technology (DLT), which is when the real innovation starts. Because repo is the fundamental building block of the financial market, its integration into DLT must be flawless.”
These dynamics have underscored the market’s role in financial integrity and risk management. As a result, BrokerTec has seen sustained volume growth through periods of uncertainty and market stress, particularly as electronification accelerates in the dealer-to-client space.
Gierke highlights BrokerTec’s position as a leading inter-dealer marketplace in the US and EU via its CLOBs, alongside rapid expansion on its dealer-to-client BrokerTec Quote platform, where both the buy and sell side are demanding greater operational efficiency.
“That positions us to serve the needs of both the buy side and the sell side at a time when their scale of volumes is only increasing,” Gierke adds. “The efficiencies we’re delivering as we evolve and expand our products are all the more important when you see this level of continued growth and market uncertainty.”
Commenting on BrokerTec Quote, Carter notes that the platform has tripled in size compared to a few years ago. Last year, BrokerTec connected its dealer-to-client RFQ business with its central limit order books, allowing clients to execute dealer-to-client requests alongside the dealer-to-dealer platform.
“We continue looking at ways to innovate that offering,” Carter concludes. “Ultimately, traders will go where the liquidity is, and we’re providing those mechanisms to make sure that BrokerTec remains at the centre of their trading execution.”
From Chicago to the future
CME Group has a long history of rates innovation and has made strides to bring the cash and derivatives markets closer together. BrokerTec’s 2021 migration to Globex was the first step in the process, bringing futures and options into direct alignment with underlying cash markets.
But the company is not resting on its laurels. Initiatives like BrokerTec Chicago provide a clear hint of the type of innovation the company is focused on for the future. Co-located with CME Group’s leading derivatives markets, this second US Treasury CLOB enables participants to trade cash Treasuries seamlessly alongside benchmark futures and options, delivering maximum efficiency for cash versus futures trading.
Discussing BrokerTec Chicago eight months on from its official launch, Gierke says: “BrokerTec Chicago is still in its infancy but we’ve been really pleased with client interest and adoption. We have over 35 firms connected and who have been trading actively, and in these early months it’s really about building an ecosystem of participants to start trading, and build volumes.”
The firm has recorded its first day with volumes reaching over a billion; an important first milestone for BrokerTec Chicago as the business gets off the ground. According to Gierke, it provides a unique and interesting complement to the firm’s existing New York CLOB, which is largely thought of as an interbank risk transfer market.
The BrokerTec Chicago offering serves as a unique vehicle for relative value trading, with its proximity to BrokerTec’s futures contracts, similar size, smaller notional, and smaller tick size — which allows for a level of relative value trading efficiency that, according to Gierke, “doesn’t exist in the market”.
“As we see the liquidity develop there — which is already edging inside of the liquidity and pricing of our New York CLOB — we’ll see it compete not just as a relative value player,” says Gierke, “but as something that the market will lean on as a great complement, alongside that New York liquidity and order book, which is the market standard.”
He states that the firm has a “solid pipeline” of banks and relative value trading firms that are still in the process of onboarding. He anticipates further growth, an expansion of client participation, and says it’s going to be another efficiency the team can deliver to clients that “no one else can by virtue of that proximity”.
Gierke expects to build on the Chicago footprint with additional products later in 2026, as well as in the coming years.
In the financing and repo market, Carter discusses the importance of benchmarks. She says the RepoFundsRate (RFR) European benchmarks have been around for several years and have been utilised heavily by the industry.
With increased focus from the global central banks on the repo market, in addition to wider appreciation and understanding of the utility of repo, these benchmarks provide colour to the centrally cleared market.
As a natural step forward, CME Group recently announced it had launched a US dollar RFR which is also now live on Bloomberg. The USD RFR is the 15:00 snap shot of the interbank activity and provides a window into where Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) will be set the following day.
Looking at the US market, Carter indicates that SOFR is trying to serve a broad part of this population — of which there are many repo participants with various financing needs. In terms of the volumes which go into SOFR, she notes that 15 per cent of this is covered by the firm’s dollar RFR.
Ultimately, with participants needing to decide a favourable metric to measure exposure and make informed trading decisions based on their specific financing needs, this benchmark is an additional reference rate for the market to use.
Sharing her thoughts on the current market landscape, Carter states: “As the repo market goes through a seismic transformation, the need for quality and tangible data points has also increased.
“This in turn has increased the interest and requirement for new, more structured products based around our RFR benchmarks.
“We’re seeing a lot of dealers in Europe now looking for OTC Swap products to make the trading of basis opportunities possible, and hedge their longer term funding risk.”
As the market continues to grow, Carter says the firm will continue to discuss internally how it can bring a data hub to the market to assist with making informed decisions — something which she is excited to look at towards the end of this year.
Concluding his thoughts on the firm’s trajectory, Gierke highlights the unparalleled breadth of CME Group’s fixed income franchise — spanning BrokerTec repo and cash markets, futures and options, swap clearing, and the upcoming CME Securities Clearing offering.
“Joining the business during a period of such profound industry transformation is incredibly exciting,” says Gierke.
“As our clients navigate massive shifts in market structure, electronification, digitalisation, and clearing, we are focused on uniting our components to deliver unique efficiencies across the execution, operational, and capital layers.
“CME Group is uniquely positioned to guide the market through this transition, and I am excited about what lies ahead.
“Together with the team, we will ensure our clients have the seamless tools and capital optimisation they need to thrive.”
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