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The London Metal Exchange will open the first clearing house of its 137-year old history on Monday, with the £50m project intended to underpin the bourse’s tilt at opening Chinese markets.

The completion of the three-year scheme was a key part of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing’s £1.4bn takeover of the group 18 months ago.

Its parent sees the venue – the undisputed centre for global metals trading – as vital for corporations and banks to trade and hedge their China-related risks from Europe.

Long seen as the unglamorous plumbing of the market, the project reflects both the enhanced status that clearing houses have received since the financial crisis.

Regulators have pushed for more of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives to be processed through risk management houses in order to provide more security to both parties to a trade.

A clearing house stands between the parties, stepping in to ensure that a deal goes ahead even if one party defaults.

It also underlines how exchanges have come to regard owning these risk management houses as central to their growth.

Operators earn money by collecting a fee each time a trade is cleared, and by placing collateral deposited with them by market participants in the money markets.

Beyond that, controlling a clearing house allows exchanges to bring new products to the market far more quickly than if they had to rely on external providers.

However, analysts have raised questions about HKEx’s purchase, which was a multiple of 180 times the LME’s final year of earnings as an independent company.

Results for 2013 showed that LME had so far incurred more costs than benefits to its parent, in spite of a contribution of $1.2bn in revenues and $326m profits.

Trevor Spanner, chief executive of LME Clear, told the Financial Times that the project “would be a significant contributor to the bottom line”.

Speaking before the HKEx deal, Martin Abbott, its previous chief executive, estimated owning its own clearing house could add more than a fifth to the LME’s revenues.

Part of HKEx’s long-term strategy for owning the LME is to exploit the opening of China’s capital account and develops infrastructure capable of trading and settling offshore renminbi. Asia accounts for about a quarter of trading on the LME’s electronic system.

The opening will also cement London’s position as one of world’s main centres for clearing.

The UK capital is the home to some of the world’s largest clearing houses including ones run by LCH.Clearnet, and US derivatives exchanges CME Group and IntercontinentalExchange. LME received European regulatory approval three weeks ago.

In mid-morning, the LME will move more than 2m positions held by 43 members in metals like copper, tin, lead, zinc and aluminium from LCH.Clearnet, its clearing house since the 1980s. It will have a default fund of $300m.

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