By Ros Krasny
NEW YORK (Reuters) - CME Group Inc CME.N will retain traditional open-outcry trading floors for now, even as its growth lags far behind electronic trading, Executive Chairman Terry Duffy said on Monday.
"The business has grown on the floor and on the screens, but obviously the screen is now the venue of choice," Duffy told the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit in New York.
"Our customers have asked us" to keep the floors open, he said, adding: "If we were going to be starting this business today, I don't think anyone would be planning a trading floor."
In April, 81 percent of CME Group's average daily volume of 10.2 million contracts was conducted on its Globex electronic trading platform. Screen trading was up 40 percent from a year earlier, while open-outcry trading rose just 1 percent.
The company's huge annual technology budget is now concentrated on boosting the speed and capacity of its electronic systems. In March, futures response times on Globex averaged 14.5 milliseconds, compared with versus 27 milliseconds in Jan-Feb, CME said in April.
CME Group was formed in 2007, when Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings bought the Chicago Board of Trade, its longtime cross-town rival, creating the world's largest derivatives exchange.
CME Group await regulatory and shareholder approval for its planned purchase of NYMEX, the huge energy and metals exchange, announced in January.
Under the deal's proposed terms, NYMEX's trading floor in downtown Manhattan would be open at least through 2012.
"We are not saying we will be closing it down, just that we have an agreement to keep it open through 2012," Duffy said. "I actually think it's a great opportunity to elevate our stature in New York."
After months of construction, the company is completing a move of its CME contracts to CBOT's trading floors.
Duffy said much of the remaining open-outcry volume is in options, where electronic systems have not been able to match the complexity of some transactions.
Forecasts predicting the demise of futures trading floors over the past decade have been mostly off-base, he said.
"Trading floors provide a different type of atmosphere altogether. Some people like taking the flavor of the market."
(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
(Reporting by Ros Krasny; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
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