Main navigation Secure Area Search Breadcrumb Home / About us / Our History Share + Our History From humble beginnings in Victorian London, to global clearing service, this is the story of LCH Over a century of risk management excellence LCH has been managing risk for over 100 years. Our journey has taken us from a small commodities clearing firm working out of a City of London backstreet, to a central counterparty that spans the globe, offering clearing services to customers across five continents and multiple asset classes. Here is a taste of our story so far: 1888 – Establishment of the London Produce Clearing House (LPCH), which offered clearing services for futures contracts in coffee, sugar and other soft commodities. 1971 – LPCH was renamed the International Commodities Clearing House. 1988 – Business was acquired by a consortium of six banks. 1992 – The London Clearing House was born, signalling the firm’s intent to broaden its clearing offering beyond commodities. 1998 – RepoClear, a clearing service for repo and bond transactions, was launched. The service enables members to more efficiently manage their euro cash liquidity as well as pool highly rated sovereign and agency general collateral trades with eligible investment-grade debt. 1999 – SwapClear, a service for clearing interest rate swaps, was launched. Today, SwapClear is open to buy-side clients, allowing end users clearing options in 21 currencies, with maturities of up to 50 years, and non-IRS instruments such as inflation swaps. 2001 – EquityClear, a clearing service for cash equities and cash equities equivalents, was launched. Through EquityClear, members and their clients are able to clear cash equities, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Exchange Traded Commodities (ETCs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) transacted on exchanges and trading venues located throughout Europe. 2003 – Merger between LCH and Paris-based central counterparty Clearnet. The merged company - renamed LCH.Clearnet - revolutionised our service offering expanding the range of products offered for clearing. 2008 – LCH.Clearnet Limited successfully resolved the $9 trillion notional interest rate swap portfolio of the defaulted clearing member, Lehman Brothers. From a portfolio that comprised more than 66,000 trades, LCH SwapClear was able to fully resolve the default within three weeks and with no loss to its other clearing members. 2012 – London Stock Exchange Group PLC assumed a majority stake in LCH.Clearnet Group Limited. Also, LCH launched LCH CDSClear, our credit default swap clearing service, and LCH ForexClear, offering currency markets a dedicated service for clearing NDFs and other foreign exchange products. 2016 – LCH.Clearnet Limited was rebranded as “LCH, The Markets’ Partner”. 2017 – SwapAgent Ltd is established, providing a service to help simplify the processing, margining and settlement of non-cleared derivatives. 2018 – LSEG increases majority shareholding in LCH to 82.6 per cent. SwapClear, LCH’s interest rate derivatives clearing service, processes over $1,077 trillion in notional – the first time over $1 quadrillion has been cleared in one year. 2020 – LSEG formed its new post trade division, bringing together the LCH Group and UnaVista. 2021 – LSEG completes the all-share acquisition of Refinitiv to create a leading global financial markets infrastructure and data provider. Footer Fraud Alert Cookies Privacy Statement Disclaimer Modern Slavery Act SiteMap Whistleblowing © 2021 LCH Cookie Control Icon LCH uses cookies to improve its website. We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We would also like to set optional cookies to improve our site and bring you more features. For more information on how we use cookies please see our cookie policy. View our cookie policies Accept all Choose cookies