CHICAGO and LONDON, Feb. 11,
2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CME Group Foundation today
announced it will provide a $1
million grant to benefit research at the Cambridge Centre
for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the University of Cambridge into the rapid growth of
alternative financial channels and instruments such as crowdfunding
and peer-to-peer lending. CME Group Foundation was established by
CME Trust to support a variety of education initiatives designed to
advance the global economy.
The $1 million grant, to be
disbursed over five years, is the largest CME Group Foundation
grant outside the United States.
This grant underscores the Foundation's growing international
educational reach and its commitment to fostering greater
understanding of alternative finance – an area of increasing
importance to the global financial system.
CME Group is the world's leading and most diverse derivatives
marketplace offering the widest range of global benchmark products
across all major asset classes.
"We are delighted to partner with the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and a
prestigious consortium of leading universities globally on their
research into alternative finance," said Jim Oliff, Chairman of CME Group Foundation.
"The Foundation has a long track record of supporting academic
institutions on innovations close to the futures and derivatives
industry. This partnership will strengthen the research framework
around the alternative finance sector and enable further
collaboration between academics, policymakers, regulators and
industry participants."
The grant will support pioneering benchmarking studies by the
CCAF on the development of alternative finance in five regions
around the world, as well as an annual alternative finance
conference organized by the Centre, which is held at the
University of Cambridge Judge Business
School. The conference will be a platform to distribute research
results and discuss other research themes related to alternative
finance.
"We are grateful for the generous support of CME Group
Foundation as we research the growth and development of alternative
finance. We firmly believe this is a structural, rather than
transitory, change in the global financial system," said
Robert Wardrop, executive director
of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. "This grant
represents a blue chip endorsement of the importance of our mission
to educate business, policymakers and the public about these vital
new areas of finance, which represent both opportunities and
challenges for financial institutions around the world."
The CCAF is an interdisciplinary academic research institute
dedicated to the study of alternative finance, including financial
channels and instruments that emerge outside the traditional
banking system. Examples of alternative finance include equity- and
reward-based crowdfunding, peer-to-peer consumer and business
lending, third-party payment platforms, SME mini-bonds, private
placements and emerging currencies.
An inaugural report by the CCAF in 2015, the first pan-European
study of alternative finance, found that the European market for
alternative finance grew by 144 percent in 2014, from €1,211
million in 2013 to €2,957 million in 2014. The new CME Group
Foundation grant will support annual reports covering five global
regions – Europe, the Americas,
Greater China, the Asia-Pacific region and the UK.
About CME Group Foundation
CME Group Foundation works
to advance the economy by supporting education from cradle to
career. The Foundation partners with universities, school
districts, charter networks and nonprofit organizations that work
to ensure at risk young children are prepared for kindergarten;
provide effective K-12 education that prepares disadvantaged
students for success in college and career; prepare university
students for careers in financial services and risk management; and
conduct academic research in areas that advance derivatives
knowledge and best practices. The Foundation was created in 2008
and endowed with a gift of $16
million from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Trust, which
was established by CME in 1969 under the direction of its then
chairman, Leo Melamed, to provide
financial protection to customers in the event a CME member firm
became insolvent or unable to meet its obligations to its
customers.
About Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at
University of Cambridge Judge Business
School
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance is based at
University of Cambridge Judge Business
School. Since 1990, Cambridge Judge has
forged a reputation as a centre of rigorous thinking and
high-impact transformative education, situated within one of the
world's most prestigious research universities, and in the heart of
the Cambridge Cluster, the most successful technology
entrepreneurship cluster in Europe. Cambridge
Judge pursues innovation through inter-disciplinary insight,
entrepreneurial spirit and collaboration. Cutting edge research is
rooted in real-world challenges and students and clients are
encouraged to ask excellent questions to create real-world change.
Undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes attract
innovators, creative thinkers, thoughtful and collaborative
problem-solvers, and current and future leaders, drawn from a huge
diversity of backgrounds and countries.
As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace,
CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) is where the world comes to manage
risk. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global
benchmark products across all major asset classes, including
futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes,
foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather
and real estate. CME Group brings buyers and sellers together
through its CME Globex® electronic trading platform, its trading
facilities in New York and
Chicago, and through its
London-based CME Europe
derivatives exchange. CME Group also operates one of the
world's leading central counterparty clearing providers through CME
Clearing and CME Clearing Europe, which offer clearing and
settlement services across asset classes for exchange-traded
contracts and over-the-counter derivatives transactions.
These products and services ensure that businesses everywhere can
substantially mitigate counterparty credit risk.
CME Group is a trademark of CME Group Inc. The Globe Logo, CME,
Globex and Chicago Mercantile Exchange are trademarks of Chicago
Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and the Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the
Board of Trade of the City of
Chicago, Inc. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and
ClearPort are registered trademarks of New York Mercantile
Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange,
Inc. KCBOT, KCBT and Kansas
City Board of Trade are trademarks of The Board of Trade of
Kansas City, Missouri, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Further information about CME Group (NASDAQ: CME) and its products
can be found at www.cmegroup.com.
CME-G
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