Something that most people will miss in this article is the acquisition of Trayport by ICE. Trayport is a UK based software company which provides the technolog

Something that most people will miss in this article is the acquisition of Trayport by ICE. Trayport is a UK based software company which provides the technological trading backbone for the European OTC Natural Gas and Power markets as well as global Wet/Dry freight, Iron Ore and Coal. The financial coal market has found great success on Trayport which facilitated increased clearing volume for both CME and ICE. Most volume is traded OTC. This partially explains why ICE bought them. Another reason is likely because ICE wants to get into markets which have been primarily broker led, and historically powered by Trayport's network.