Intercontinental Exchange

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) is one of the world's oldest futures and options exchanges, established in 1848 in Chicago, Illinois. Originally founded to address supply and demand challenges in the grain industry, CBOT grew to offer contracts across agricultural commodities, CBOT U.S. Treasury bonds, equity indexes, and metals. CME Group merged with CBOT in 2007, making it one of four Designated Contract Markets within the CME Group family.

Flett Exchange was a New Jersey-based electronic exchange for environmental commodity credits, established around 2004. Flett specialised in US environmental market instruments including NOx (nitrogen oxide) allowances under the EPA SIP Call, SO2 (sulphur dioxide) allowances under the Acid Rain Program, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon allowances, and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). The exchange served power generators, utilities, and compliance buyers navigating the complex US state and federal cap-and-trade regulatory frameworks for air emissions.

The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange (WCE), founded in 1887, was Canada's primary agricultural futures exchange, serving as the world's leading market for canola futures and other Canadian crops including oats, flaxseed, and domestic feed wheat. In 2007, WCE was acquired by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and renamed ICE Futures Canada in 2008. Canola futures, the exchange's flagship contract, continue to be one of the most actively traded agricultural derivatives globally under ICE.

The U.S. Futures Exchange (USFE) was a Chicago-based electronic futures exchange founded in 2004 by a consortium including Goldman Sachs, Man Financial, and others, with the goal of introducing competition into the US Treasury and energy futures markets dominated by the CME and CBOT. Despite significant backing and low-cost trading incentives, USFE failed to attract sufficient liquidity from established market participants and closed operations in December 2007 after roughly three years of trading.