This is old stuff... Since the whole electronic market started... US has been competing with them... a/c/e, Globex, Eagle, Globex2, and etc... they all are responces towards electronic market trend... which started in Europe. They are well experience and has been looking in and improving on the electronic game longer than the US markets... Now that Eurex is opening US Interest product, the CBOT kicked European ties and got together with CME.... CBOT and CME is big news but also it's how much CBOT is in heat... At least CME has the resources, capital, and product to compete with all of European Markets single handedly... CBOT is too old and uptight which is causing the exchange in a lot of heat. Eurex having lower exchange seat prices, exchange fees and reliable trading platform, it is evident that CBOT will lose business... Funny thing I heard was that the occupancy of businesses in the CBOT building is dropping... most firms are moving to CME (which is expensive) or buildings around the Chicago Loop (or Financial area...) At least, historically, when CBOT and CME gets together... they make things happen...
Globex has been invented by French market's officials. They also bought London's Liffe this is really strange that the City gave the highly symbolic Liffe's market to the french I really wonder what it means... except that competition is a pure appearance. French market has undergone an uncredible number of "unexpected" halts so that professional traders make complains in newpaper and they have even been surprised to have made fake transactions on bonds futures market during the bull phase : that was discovered by chance by a judge who visited the COB (the equivalent of SEC) which also shows that COB didn't do his job of market police ! They pretexted that other market places were doing the same thing so ladies and gentlemen you have an official proof that the so called stupidity of market's mania has been at least sponsored by the officials of many world markets. The competition is just a pretext so that they can justify what is unjustifiable normally: normally making fake transactions leads to prison.