CME Group hires ex-CFTC General Counsel Jonathan Marcus

“As we continue to transform our business and serve our clients around the world, Jonathan’s global legal expertise will be critical to our efforts to achieve our strategic objectives.”

CME Group has named Jonathan Marcus as Senior Managing Director and General Counsel, reporting to CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy.

As the chief legal advisor for CME Group, Jonathan Marcus will oversee the company’s compliance, enterprise risk management, legal and market regulation functions.

Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO of CME Group, commented: “Jonathan brings nearly 30 years of experience in regulatory enforcement, compliance and litigation across both government and private practice, and we are very pleased to add him to our Management Team. As we continue to transform our business and serve our clients around the world, Jonathan’s global legal expertise will be critical to our efforts to achieve our strategic objectives.”

Specialized in derivatives regulation, litigation and enforcement.

Jonathan Marcus joins CME Group after doing private practice as a partner at Reed Smith, LLP, where he specialized in derivatives regulation, litigation and enforcement.

Prior to Reed Smith, LLP, he was General Counsel of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 2013 to 2017, where he advised the commission on the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act and digital asset regulation, among other matters. At the CFTC, he also served Deputy General Counsel for Litigation and as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States.

His career includes senior roles at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s Derivatives Group and Covington & Burling’s Appellate and Supreme Court Group.

CME expands crypto reference rate offering with Avalanche, Filecoin, Tezos

The largest derivatives exchange group continues to strengthen its digital asset offering, having recently announced plans to launch three new cryptocurrency reference rates and real-time indices, which will be calculated and published daily by CF Benchmarks, beginning October 31.

The three new cryptocurrencies are Avalanche (AVAX), Filecoin (FIL), and Tezos (XTZ). These reference rates and indices are not tradable futures products. Instead, each of these new reference rates will provide the U.S. dollar price of each digital asset, published once-a-day at 4 p.m. London time, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

CME CF Reference Rates and Real-Time Indices are based on robust methodologies that have regular expert oversight and are designed to meet the growing need for transparent, regulated and round-the-clock pricing.

Several leading crypto exchanges and trading platforms will provide pricing data for these new benchmarks, starting initially with Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit, Kraken, and LMAX Digital. Each coin will trade on a minimum of two of these constituent exchanges.

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