Since Chicago’s futures exchanges created Treasury futures in the 1970s, the world has always come to the city to hedge on US interest rates.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange developed contracts on short-term Treasuries, while the Chicago Board of Trade launched longer-term contracts. When the former bought the latter for $11bn in 2007, it created the CME Group, a company with a vice-like grip over the US Treasury futures industry, with market share of more than 95 per cent.
