Speaking at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit in Amsterdam, Charlotte Alliot discusses Euronext’s plans to grow its asset class coverage across fixed income derivatives, including mini futures on European government bonds. The head of financial derivatives says the firm’s foray into fixed income futures is to provide new product innovations rather than “copy and paste what others are doing” in the market.
With 2026 around the corner, Alliot shares Euronext’s plans to grow the retail and institutional market share across the instruments and onboard more market makers.
Interview
Jo Gallagher – There is a big push to drive engagement across the retail trading space in Europe. What role are new innovations and derivative products playing in that?
Charlotte Alliot – Retail is extremely important to Euronext. You know, we are an aggregation of local exchanges, and as such, we have unique links with the retail community. At Euronext, we believe it is possible to innovate in derivatives and to do it with the retail investors. We have decided to enter the fixed income space, but we have not decided to copy and paste what the others are doing and do it less expensive. We really wanted to enter this market with an innovation responding to the needs of individual investors. So, you know, we see the acquisition of Borsa Italiana. We have acquired the cash bond market of MTS and MOT, which are booming. So we’ve been talking with this trading community to our clients, and we have been co-designing a true innovation, because on the 22nd of September, we released the first ever created mini futures on government bonds. We have released 10-year contracts on the Bund (German government bond), the Bono (Spanish government bond), the BTP (Italian government bonds), and the OAT. But we have also put on the market the first-ever 30-year contract on the BTP. So it’s really a major innovation, but it’s not only a retail story. We have a lot of interest from the buy-side community. Buy-side firms they don’t only manage large funds, they also manage smaller funds, and these contracts can give way more granularity, because they have a 25k Euro size, and as they are in cash settlement, they are really easy to integrate. So we are very proud to enter the fixed income space with a real innovation. We are here to really grow the pie and grow the set of opportunities for investors.
I’m very happy to tell you that the contracts have traded very few minutes after we launched them. That was very beautiful to see. I can tell you after all the work you know this initiative represented, and it’s real trades. So we have approximately 50% of the trade is retail. The other 50% is market maker. It’s extremely healthy. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the market makers, because they’re doing a terrific job on the liquidity, but we need to onboard more of them. It’s going to happen in the coming weeks, and we have new players joining. So it’s an ongoing process, but I would say the first step, you know, went successfully, and it’s really nice today to see the volume growing, the open interest building, new participants joining. But you know, it’s not the only innovation you will see from us. I cannot disclose everything that will happen next year, but we have more in the pipeline. What I can tell you is that we are going to continue to leverage MTS and MOT to build a very strong derivative franchise.
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