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Modern Money SmartPod

Road Trip: Anthony Attia Recaps a Busy Week in Boca for Euronext

March 13, 2025 • SmartBrief • Season 4 • Episode 8

We wrap up our road trip to the International Futures Industry Conference via a conversation with Anthony Attia, the Global Head of Derivatives & Post Trade at Euronext. Anthony shares some of his key takeaways from a busy week in Boca, including:

Discussions about the feasibility and business case for 24/7 trading at the industry level.
Relatively little talk about AI -- which might indicate industry maturity on the topic.
Euronext's recent announcement that it will clear crypto ETFs and ETPs.
Outlining Euronext's strategic initiatives around listed derivatives, OTC derivatives, clearing, and post-trade services to drive more trading and clearing business.

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(Note: This transcript was created using AI. It has not been edited verbatim.)

Sean McMahon 0:05

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Modern Money Smart pod. I'm your host, Sean McMahon, and this podcast road trip continues as I'm coming to you from the International Futures Industry Conference in Boca, Raton, Florida. Joining me right now is Anthony Attia. Anthony is a member of the executive committee and Head of Global Derivatives and Post-Trade at Euronext. Anthony, how are you doing today?

Anthony Attia 0:29

Very well. Very well. Sean. I'm very happy that we spent three days in this exciting venue here in Boca, and this particular moment of our of our industry as well.

Sean McMahon 0:39

Yeah, I think, well, this is my last interview, and I think you just told me off the air that this is that this is your last meeting. So we're wrapping up the week. It is, what were some of your key takeaways from what was obviously a very busy, busy week

Anthony Attia 0:50

A few weeks ago. We're preparing to come to Boca, and we, you know, we lined up something like 45 meetings in three days, and the objective for us was to talk about our new strategic plan, which is all about growth, and talk about all the great initiatives that we've been lining up on expansion of our listed derivatives, of our repo clearing, expansion into power derivatives, etc, etc. But then a couple of weeks ago, we also decided that it was very important for us to be here to try and understand better on the ground what was happening in the US from the point of view of geopolitical and the point of view of policies. And I must admit, after three days of intense meetings and networking and great, great moment with all the market participants and clients and competitors and independent software vendors, I'm not sure I'll learn more about what was happening in the US.

Sean McMahon 1:45

Well, I got some bad news for you. I've been here a lot longer than three days, and I'm not even sure what's going on in the US markets these days,

Anthony Attia 1:51

Right, right? So, I mean, not knowing is an information in itself. So that's what I'm going to take away back home. But for sure, I mean, there was some, some finding, there was some new, new theme that popped up for us, such as the kind of expectation from some market participants to, you know, to see the industry working on 24 hour trading seven days a week. So that's something that came up in a lot of conversations, a form of maturity in the in the way the industry looks at a tokenization in particular on collateral. So that's that's also something that there was a consensus on that what was surprising to me that although I was expecting not to have any conversation about ESG, I didn't expect to have zero conversation about AI.

Sean McMahon 2:36

Oh, nobody, nobody bent your ear about the latest and greatest. AI offering

Anthony Attia 2:39

No, and I don't think it's because AI doesn't matter, of course not. I think it's because AI has been digested, integrated into everyone's priorities and roadmap, and that's not a topic for debate. And so, so that was the form of maturity on the on the AI discussion. So I'm looking forward to see where we are next year and see if you know, if you were, if everyone delivered their plans on AI and how it impacted their firms. But it looks like it's becoming an operational topic, more than a topic for debate.

Sean McMahon 3:10

Any other topics that piqued your interest? There's a lot of chatter around crypto, I know,

Anthony Attia 3:13

Yeah, a lot of chatter on cryptos, with some of the crypto actors that are back in Boca and vocal. I mean, they their expectations is that, because of the form of posing regulation in the US in particular, and the willingness of the US administration to create a framework, a workable framework on crypto, you know, these this, this particular part of our ecosystem is expecting to have this regulatory framework that creates more business for them and that connects the traditional finance and decentralized finance together. But I personally felt that retail clients in the traditional finance world have different expectations and different training habits that crypto clients and so and so. I think there's a discussion to be had at industry level. Is probably for FIA also to work on that, to see how far we want to integrate these two worlds together. Because, you know, coming back to the 24/7 trading concept, who are we serving for that, and what's the what's the business case? Because the from an operational point of view, and I come from from operation, so I'm sensitive to the way we do settlement, that the way we run clearing, the way we run corporate actions, etc. There's so many open issues there that makes that the 24 hour seven trading will take a lot of effort and a lot of money and a lot of time to be implemented. And so the question is, I understand it's useful for the crypto world, but is it the number one priority for for the derivative and the clearing space, I don't know.

Sean McMahon 4:43

Yeah, it seems like there's been a little bit of uncertainty for a lot of those issues and but now crypto is kind of bringing it to the fore, because it's kind of, I don't want to say, unleash the animal spirits of crypto, but perhaps you said it best that crypto is back. You know, crypto was here five years ago and then blew up, and now it's back.

Anthony Attia 4:59

And you know, Euronext has announced a few days ago that our Clearing House was ready to clear crypto etps and crypto ETFs. So this is a big step for us, because we have, we have demand in Europe. The ETF market has been exploding, booming. Our first quarter volumes are 60% higher than the first quarter last year, and so we want to be there to capture all the innovation in the world of ETF, including crypto.

Sean McMahon 5:27

Yeah, it seems like it's there's a lot of opportunity there. For sure, what are you hoping to see or be talking about when you come to Boca next year for the 51st edition of this conference?

Anthony Attia 5:36

So look, for sure, your next strategic initiatives are very much about diversity, diversification, and we have made public that we were investing significantly into listed derivatives, into OTC derivatives, into clearing, into post trade in in general. And so what I would hope is that next year, all the conversations that we had with our potential clients and our clients this year materialize into into concrete business and more, more trading with us, more clearing with us, and that we can talk about the how to accelerate our own plans.

Sean McMahon 6:11

So more talk about optimizing business, less talk about geopolitics.

Anthony Attia 6:15

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know what a competition is good, because when your next talks about expansion of all of our different different asset classes and businesses. It's also about creating healthy competition between between exchanges and between clearing houses to the benefit of the clients.

Sean McMahon 6:32

I gotta say, it would, it would be nice for a level playing field for everyone to compete, and that's the kind of conversations I like having at Boca as well.

Anthony Attia

Fabulous. Agree,

Sean McMahon

Anthony, thank you very much for your time.

Anthony Attia

Thank you, Sean.

Sean McMahon

Well, that's our show for today, but before I get out of here, one last reminder, be sure to watch for more episodes of this podcast as we bring you all the news and headlines from the 50th annual International Futures Industry Conference in Boca.