Good morning, and welcome to the Intercontinental Exchange, Second Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Kelly Loeffler. Please go ahead, ma'am

Good morning. To obtain a copy of the company's second quarter earnings release and presentation, please visit the Investor and Media section of our website at theice.com. These items will be archived and our call will be available for replay. Please be aware that our comments may contain certain forward-looking statements. These statements represent our current judgment and are subject to various risks, assumptions, and uncertainties as outlined in the company's filings with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from those that are expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements. Please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and our second quarter Form 10-Q for a description of the risks that could cause our results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. In addition, please see Annex A of our earnings release or the appendix of this presentation for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP measure. With us today are Jeff Sprecher, Chairman and CEO; Scott Hill, Chief Financial Officer; and Chuck Vice, President and Chief Operating Officer. At the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we'll take your questions. I'll now turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Kelly and thank you all for joining us this morning. Before we go through some of the key metrics, I'd like to highlight a number of milestones that we achieved in the second quarter. Despite the fact that the second quarter has historically been a seasonally slower quarter for ICE, this past quarter ranked as our second best quarter ever, in terms of revenue and net income and we generated a record level of operating cash flow. Also, for the second consecutive quarter, over 120 million contracts were traded on the ICE platform. Further ICE Futures Europe and our OTC Energy Markets delivered their highest volume quarter ever and we recorded our second highest quarterly volume at ICE Futures US. Both the ICE Brent and ICE WTI Crude Oil Contract set new all time quarterly volume record. Our OTC business, once again recorded average daily commissions exceeding $ 1 million. And last but not least, our Market data business reached a record $25 million in revenue for the quarter. These accomplishments are particularly noteworthy, when viewed in the context of uncertainty in the credit, regulatory and economic environment. Having worked towards the launch of three significant middle-long term growth drivers during the third quarter, our core business fundamentals remain strong. With that introduction, I'd now ask you to flip to slide four where we can review the details of our second quarter performance, which kept up a record first half. ICE delivered among the highest growth rates in revenue and net income in the global exchange sector. Consolidated revenues of $197 million were up 44% over last year's second quarter. Operating income was up 74% to $133 million and our operating margin was 67%. Our effective tax rate for the second quarter was 35.5%. Net income increased 58% to…

Thank you, Scott and good morning, everyone. As you can see, ICE continues to demonstrate a solid track record of revenue and earnings growth. We have a number of new initiatives coming online in the third quarter that will reinforce the strength of our global exchange model. We believe we have distinguished ourselves in the industry as the leading operator of both regulated futures markets and well established transparent over-the-counter markets. There is a lot I would like to cover this morning, including an update on recent activity in Washington. I will also discuss our clearing and Russel's strategies and our core business. As most of you know, commodity prices have become a central issue in Washington and across the globe. Given the impact of rising prices that commodities have on businesses and consumers alike, the United States Congress's focus on this issue is understandable. Those of who you have followed commodity markets over time will realize that this situation is not new. At many points in history, legislators, when faced with complex market conditions that are not easily explained have blamed speculators for rising prices. Today, this is especially true in the case of the global crude oil markets. However, there are many contrary views emerging, that point towards basic market forces as the drivers of prices in crude oil markets. Today, the United States imports over two-third of its oil, competing with countries around the world for an increasingly scarce supply of a necessary commodity. The interim report on crude oil which was produced by an inter-agency task force on commodity markets in the United States rejected the idea that speculation was a primary driver of today's crude oil prices, rather experts such as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the U.S Secretary of Energy, the U.S Secretary…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. In the interests of time, please limit your self to one question and one follow-up question. [Operator Instructions]. And we'll take our first question from Daniel Harris with Goldman Sachs.

Hi, Jeff. How are you doing?

Good morning.

I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the transition from ICE Clear Europe to... I mean from LCH to ICE Clear Europe. What exactly happens there? Is there just a shift to be open interest or is there some sort of transition arrangement [ph] that has to occur?

Sure. Dan, let me ask Chuck Vice to take that one for you, since he's been intimately involved.

Daniel, I'll try to answer that from a couple of points. One, we've talked in the past about the technology aspect of that and there we've tried to insulate the clearing members as much as possible from what has to be... from the transition itself by using the same, plus some of the back office systems, same back office systems provided by a third-party that LCH uses today. From a legal standpoint, they are actually open interest novation agreements that each and every clearer has signed at this point. This specifies the legal rights and obligations of the LCH and ICE Clear Europe and the members themselves in terms of the timing of that transition over what we've have being calling transition weekend. When those contracts becomes resident than... excuse me, rather than LCH being the counter party on those contracts, that ICE Clear Europe becomes the counter party to those contracts. The final step that we are working on now defines the financial aspect of it as there is about $15 billion to $17 billion worth of margin that will... that has to move from LCH to ICE Clear Europe and that's quite a challenge because you don't want to or we want... certainly want to avoid double margining members over that weekend, which we've been able to do. And negotiating all the details with LCH and the members in terms of how both the collateral and the cash itself will be held in trust on behalf of ICE and then move over to ICE on that Monday, after transition weekend. So it's a very complicated and ambitious... I would say probably one of the most ambitious projects we've taken on at ICE. And as far as the... we had an initial date in July. We've deferred that a couple of times as Jeff mentioned in his remarks. And I think at this stage we're very confident in that weekend in September as we've now got all the finer points of the transition agreed to with all the parties.

So, then is the margin down is shifting more just a matter of there could be issue of a couple of days or is there anything else that can happen there?

No. it will all happen over that weekend.

Okay, great.

Nevertheless we put that margin into trust and the trustee will move the margin money with the positions.

Okay, thanks. And then Jeff just as a follow up here, I was just hoping you could comment a bit what we've been seeing in the WTI and Brent markets here, over the past few months. Certainly there is been obviously lot of noise going from a regulatory front, but can you just address how you see the market share playing out in WTI? On some days it seems like you guys have been dipping below what we've have normally expecting another days that bounces back, but certainly there is been a lower trend in some cases than we've seen in the past and yet your Brent is also are doing very well. So any more color there, would be great?

Sure. A couple of points, one is when you step back and look at crude oil to begin with, it's not a product that you I will ever consume, it's a raw material and so people there actually are the natural hedgers, are oil companies, who are both on the buy side and the sell side. On the buy side, they are as refiners and on the sell side as producers or pumpers of oil. So what we are hearing from large integrated oil companies as well as witnessing in the market is that there is tremendous amount of hedging that's going on right now in the energy complex. But the hedging has tended to be in the actual products that people are exposed to. So natural gas for example, we mentioned has been doing quite well on ICE. The oil companies are telling us that the crude markets are very, very choppy. They have never seen this kind of twice movement intra day. It can move $10 while somebody is at lunch and so which is a big move for the crude market. So what's happened is that people that trade crude oil have traded shorter dated positions, instead of holding longer positions. A lot of the... in a rising price environment, a lot of the oil companies don't really need to hedge as they are the net beneficiary of rising prices and so that leads to overall lower volumes in crude oil trading and a lot of people, because of the choppy nature of the markets have instead captured those trends or hedged those trends in the options market, which is not a market that we have. And in the options market, the options expire into the underlying, in other words, if you hold an option into expiration,…

Thanks very much

We will go next to Ken Worthington, JPMorgan

Hi, good morning.

Good morning.

You had presented in expense savings road map from the acquisition of NYBOT, can you just talk about a little about where you stand right now on that savings timeline? And what has yet to be realized?

Ken, we had mentioned earlier in the year that we are actually trending ahead of where our original guidance had been with regard to synergies. In fact we had increased the synergy total for this year to the $18 million to $20 million range and we are remaining well on track to that. Frankly the synergy story at ICE Futures U.S. has been really good one for us. If you look at the absolute operating margins for that business, in the first quarter I think I even remarked on the call that were close to 70%, an operating margin, Which was nearly double where they were in the first quarter a year before and we had similar performance in this quarter. We once again saw very solid margin inline with the rest of the company, from our ICE Futures U.S. business. So we remain well on track to the synergies that we guided this year which will increase from the original business case and the profit contributions form ICE Futures U.S. continue to be very strong.

On that $18 million to $20 million are you most the way there already or is that back end loaded? Can you give us some more --

No, no, it's in our run rate now Ken.

Okay.

Because it's 18 to 20 of the full year number, but we are on track with that through first half and then through the second half, in our run rate now.

Okay, and I apologize fro this next question, if I've gotten this wrong, I thought on ICE Clear Europe, the original synergy or the revenue guidance was somewhere for $25 million to $30 million for the second half of '08. And I think if I read it correctly in this press release, you said $20 million to $25 million. Do I have my numbers right or did I?

You do have them, but let me give you a little context. The $25 million to $30 million was assuming a July launch date. The $20 million to $25 million, we're holding beside a two month shift in that launch.

Okay, so I think in your July 7th release, you wrote that you didn't expect guidance to change at all and it decreased by, call it $5 million. I want to see there was something that I needed to read in to that.

No, what I think what we actually said was that we would be at or near the lower end of the range and we are at or near the low end of the range of $20 million to $25 million. Again, with two months less operating time in the year.

Okay great. Thank you very much.

We will take our next question from Roger Freeman, Lehman Brothers.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to come back to the Creditex business and your thoughts with respect to how you are going to be positioned in CDS market. So what we are seeing is the brokers are basically shooting for the year-end move on to a clearing, a centralized clearing facility. And I guess there is joint venture to do that. How do you... what do you think your opportunity around that move into a centralized platform and should ultimately there be some sort of an exchange feature or platform or some of that, maybe the more liquid indices to try?

Sure, I think it's early days here, so in making the acquisition, we thought about a couple of different roadmaps, if you will, on the how the market might unfold, and we are trying to be prepared for any one those. But at 50,000 feet, our sense is that whether we're involved in the... in solving the back office problems and clearing and credit emulation problems or not. As those are going to get solved and we believe they will, we think the market is poised for growth. So Creditex if it does nothing more than what it's doing now, we think it's very well positioned in what would be a growing market. Given that, Creditex has really specialized in electronic trading and the electronification of the most liquid part of the credit market. And I would just say, stepping back even 100,000 feet, I think we believe that credit is an asset class and that asset class is here to stay, regardless of some of the problems that we are in now, without respect for how its going to unfold. More specifically, the dealers and the movement towards clearing has been focused on the index business which is the easier part of the business to think about clearing, it's the most liquid, it's the most standardized, and... but the Creditex has been working and we knew this at the time that we were doing diligence on the company and got quite excited about it. They have been working on this compression system and algorithm for a single name CDS. And under that scenario, the dealers are going to use Creditex's straight through processing and hook to their back office systems and send the trade to us and market together and we are going to do a number of things that I am not necessarily privileged to talk about right now, in terms of manipulating them and reducing the outstanding number of trades. We think that being in that work flow process bodes well for us. We think that a... an index clearing model alone is not enough to deal with the credit problems and that in the CDS market and so we are quite hopeful because we are in a daily dialogue with the major users of the market. As the market is being redesigned and restructured that will have a lot of visibility into it and be able to be opportunistic about how we might work with the major participants. So net-net, I think regardless of who does the back office systems and credit amelioration, Creditex is very, very well positioned. And that's the bet we're making. Of all things that ICE has bought, I suggest that this is probably the one that has the most risk, because nobody has a crystal ball for what's going to happen to these markets and exactly how they are going to unfold and when.

Okay, that's helpful, thanks. And then my second question would just be around volumes, you showed an interesting chart here on slide 15 with aggregating your energy volumes and it just highlights how much stronger the growth rate has been in the OTC business? And I guess, could you just maybe comment a little more around that or are we seeing sort of specific to natural gas here, volumes, or is this a sign of the OTC markets like more and more with yours or the counter parties wind up moving into a clear platform because of credit concerns or how do you sort of part the differential growth rate between that and the futures markets?

I think it is everything you mentioned. As I said in my prepared remarks, we are seeing more commercial users in those markets. And so I think that as our OTC markets have become more regulated, more transparent and we have been able to go out and sell customers on the participation in those markets in ways that they haven't used them before, we are getting the hedging business. And the hedging business really like I mentioned earlier... answer to Dan Harris is a business that where people if you can hedge this specific commodity, you want to do that. So ICE has largely natural gas and electricity in those OTC markets. Nymex has gasoline and natural gas as futures and then both Nymex and ICE have heating oil, ours is in the form of something called gas oil and there's in U.S. heating oil, which is a middle dis-split hedge. In many cases for example, an airline. If you were to think about an airline hedging, an airline could buy crude oil potentially to hedge, but a closer substitute would be heating oil because it's a distillated product that captures the problems that are inherent in the global refining industry right now. So what you're seeing is sort of that movement out of the benchmark crude contract in the specific products and a positioning of ICE's OTC markets with more confidence and with these reporting requirements and position requirements that were part of recent regulation,

Okay, thank you.

We will go next to Howard Chen with Credit Suisse.

Hi, good morning everyone.

Good morning Howard.

Morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. First on the ICE Clear revenue guidance, you spoke to achieving $20 million to $25 million in '08, but I didn't hear an update to the full year '09 guidance. Can you give any update here on a full year basis?

Howard, we are not going to project out any future revenues because it is very similar to our future's business, where we don't provide forward-looking guidance. It's very sensitive to volumes. And so anything I project for you in 2009 would by definition have to include some prediction of volatility in volumes and we just frankly don't have the data to make projection. What we did even the fourth quarter, that last three and a half month's guidance that we've provided, those have some underlying volume assumption in it, but we're not going to project as we move forward.

Right.

With regards to top line.

I guess, put in other way, is it fair to say that if we assume no growth in your business from fourth quarter levels or new product traction in '09, that $80 million to $100 million in synergies is a good starting point for '09. I mean annualizing that three and a half months?

I think that would be a reasonable approach.

Okay and then, thanks. And then... my follow-up, with all that's going on in Capitol Hill, Jeff in addressing energy prices. Is all that debate and discussion helping or hurting the conversation to evolve other market structures or other over-the-counter markets like, what's going on in credit derivatives now?

Well, I guess looking at the positive of what's being going in Capitol Hill, ICE's had an opportunity to meet lots of Congressmen and Senators and have a lot of sit down conversations. And we've taken the opportunity to talk more broadly about businesses and they go beyond energy. Similarly, the debate about energy has gotten into other parts of government, the White House, the Treasury and the Fed and so we've an opportunity to talk about the broader OTC space with the most senior people in policy making in the U.S. and in Europe. And so, I think it bodes well for us. And then we have a good dialogue, I mentioned in a recent article that was written about us that one of the things that we've concluded is that we need to get out ahead of some of these issues as it relates to credit. We're talking privately about our vision and with the policy makers and with major market participants, so that... as those markets grow, which I am projecting that they will, they don't suddenly hit the radar screen in Washington, and there's a knee jerk reaction to them. And so that... I think it's any takeaway from what we've been going through, it's a sense that our industry as a whole and ICE, specifically, we did not do enough education on the Hill to even educate on some of the most basic matters which is why is it important to have a predictive Futures market that's open and transparent and available globally to everybody. And so, I think at least with respect to ICE, we're putting in permanent infrastructure to continue to deal with that, with really some great people that we've been able to attract to help us with our message.

Thanks. It's helpful.

We'll go next to Jonathan Casteleyn with Wachovia Securities.

Hi Good morning.

Good morning, hi, Jonathan.

Jeff, you mentioned recently, our market share calculation of near 10% in OTC nat-gas and power, just wondering how you formulated that market share and just what you think going forward, what you're target market share could be?

Sure, I mean as you know it's very, very hard to project market share in the over-the-counter market, it's very hard to know exactly where it begins and where it ends for example. Which is frankly I am going say and one of the probable reasons it's been hard to regulate those markets. That number that I threw out there represents our best guess at the overall size of over-the-counter energy trading globally. So it would include foreign gas and power markets as well as crude oil and more importantly the products from a barrel of oil that would be included in those markets as well. Things like Naphtha, things like... things like European and Asian jet fuel, those kinds of things which are traded also in the over-the-counter stocks market.

And Of course, I mean the target market share, I mean customers generally don't let one venue go all the way to 100%, so just wondering what you think is achievable?

Yes I... unfortunately I agree with you on that point. But it's still really early days, I mean a lot of the... one of the things that we followed up on the Hill and you read some of the articles about it, it's one of the things that we kept pointing out is that almost 0% of the distillating [ph] crude markets trade electronically right now. Yet there are very, very large markets and the things that have caught on with electronic trading are largely gas and power slots and I think that owes itself to the fact that those are emerging markets and to a certain degree, ICE and Chuck Vice who's sitting next to me helped design the early tradable slots because we were working with the dealers to design something that had standard structures so that we could clear them. And we helped move the market in to a standardized format, so it's really borne out of the fact that we wanted to do clearing. So that is happening in these other markets, more of these OTC slots are available for clearing, which means that overtime they will become more standardized, particularly as people have pressure on their balance sheets. And so then they'll make themselves available to electronic trading once they become standardized. So I think that, that addressable market is big and if you look at the moves that we have been making, recently to M&A, we are trying to get deeper in to the OTC markets because it is a bigger addressable market as opposed to the buying things that foster our futures position.

Great. Thanks for that. Just quickly, I know you promised us a forward call after the potential closure of Creditex, but just wondering in the T-0 [ph] product, you talk a fee per transaction processing event, any insight as to the specific economics there?

No, I would say that T-0 is really a small revenue producer right now but poised for big things. The T-0 connectivity is going to be used by the dealers for the compression and T-0, I think has over 200 buy side firms that are hooked up to it. So the compression that's starting right now is just an inner dealer compression. And once that gets going and proves itself out and the goal is to take $10 trillion worth of notional value out of the system by the end of the year. So there is a lot of work to do there, but once that gets going then I think it will be opened up to the buy side potentially. And try to compress all the single named CDS that we can do. And because it's using the conductivity in T-0, it then opens up the other products that are hooked on to T-0 platform to the broader community. Things like novation which is another big area that the Fed is pushing on the CDS community to standardize around.

Does Creditex get paid for dealer compression or that's just as you're saying for initial foray?

No, we do get paid.

Okay.

It's... we were aggressive in terms of making it low cost to the dealers, so that it wouldn't... that the amount of money wouldn't stand in the way of them selecting our compression, but it's a good number. So I think there is a lot of hidden value and credit action. And that's really why we wanted it. There has been a lot of talk and maybe you have heard from some of your customers about the exchanges moving into the IDB space and while it's symbolic, I think that ICE has moved that way with Creditex. It was so many of these others factors that were inherent in Creditex that really go our attention. Not the fact that it's just so reserved for dealers. And Creditex was able to do that because of the high quality people that they have working there. And we just... good businesses are about having good people. And so I think between the two of us some of the parts they have and some of the parts we have with the team it's already been working very intimately together on this compression initiative I think it poised for bigger thing.

Understood, I appreciate your time, thank you.

We will go next to Rich Repetto with Sandler O'Neill. Richard H. Repetto - Sandler O'Neill & Partners L.P: Good morning, guys

Good morning, Rich

Hey, Rich. Richard H. Repetto - Sandler O'Neill & Partners L.P: I guess... two most questions been asked already. First, what is is there a difference between the margin requirement that LCH is charging, requiring for WTI and Brent versus Nymex and what is it, if there is a difference

Yes, let me have Chuck answer that for you.

There is a difference, I don't know the exact percentages, its mainly... keep in mind margins are updated periodically based on the level of prices, the volatility in prices, LCH has historically updated those on lets just say on a less frequent basis then we planned to, keep in mind LCH has included many more market beyond ICE and have to manage margins in all of those markets. And so there are times when one market lags the others. Sometimes LTH has been higher than Nymex, sometimes it's been lower. At the moment, since the recent surge in crude prices over the last 3 4 months, as the margin prices were adjusted by both Nymex and LCH, currently our crude margin rates, LCH are... I am guessing generally are 25% higher...

WTI right now is at about 14,000 and Nymex, I think it's somewhere between 11 and 12000. So that's 25-30% more.

Right so. What we planned to do via the transition, obviously on the weakened transition we want as few things changing as possible. So we will go forward over that weekend with the existing LCH rates. And over the ensuing weeks, we will move toward our own risk analysis which we have completed and are in place. And risk scheme and processes that will go update those margin rates on a pretty frequent basis. And so we don't know what's been now and mid-September may look like, but if we were managing those margin rates today, we... our rates would show a decline in the WTI rates, as Scott just mentioned. Richard H. Repetto - Sandler O'Neill & Partners L.P: Yes, I would imagine, it's probably very frustrating for you right now. But I imagine you don't have a lot of lobbying power either right now. Would that --

Again, I mean the margins are very sensitive thing, as you've have seen on Capitol Hill and risk people, the people manage these rates, if not driven by, trying to get an advantage over a competitor, it's pure number crunching, based on the data and objective margin rates come out and they are where they are. You want to make sure that they are accurate and they reflect all the correlations between products and so forth but, yes at this moment in time it's the difference is may be having some effect, but these things tend to balance out over the long term, I think. Richard H. Repetto - Sandler O'Neill & Partners L.P: Okay and my follow-up question would be for Jeff on the CDS. Don't you have a seat at the table by Creditex being a part on of the Clearing Corp.? I guess the question is if the investment banks do get their way and it looks they are well on their way to clearing... centrally cleared the indices of the most liquid products like you have mentioned. Does this essentially lock you out of... the question of funds ability now of those indices where they are trading. Does that's become... that essentially lock you out of clearing these products and it looks like you are positioning that the economic value of T plus zero and the trade compression is very material. And I guess, just trying to figure out does that lock you over that, will you be not part of and how meaningful is the economic value of that compression?

Yes, couple of things. First of all, ICE's hooked to that Clearing Corp. We have an API and direct connectivity to the Clearing Corp. because that's where we clear our climate and emissions contracts. So from a technology standpoint, we have an understanding of how to get positions in and out of the Clearing Corp. And it think that the dealers are really looking to minimize the footprint of risk in the CDS market and a lot of them have, I mean a number of these mid-tier banks have almost stopped trading or really dramatically reduced their trading because they've run out of balance sheet in the CDS space. So I think anything in unlocks that ridge, whether it's... whether we do it or whether third-party does it, I think it's going to increase the volume and velocity of CDS trading. The credit electronic platform is really very well liked and used by the either community, and so I think they will still be doing their execution and they should be doing more execution and there maybe competition for execution, because I don't think that dealers has want any one execution venue to dominate. And how those trade get from our execution platform into the Clearing Corp. will be determined over time, but I think technologically, we'll have straight through processing in the back office on credit and understanding of how to get things into the Clearing Corp. through the API that should make it relatively easy for us to send trades there if that's what the industry wants. In terms of the compression, the point I am trying to make is that all the talk right now and the scramble to figure our how to clear CDS has been in the industry, but the broad based business has a…

We'll go next to Chris Allen with Banc of America Securities.

Good morning, everybody. I just have a one quick question. Just on ICE Clear Europe, when you provided the initial guidance way back when I think the rates that... we get back into for our associates [ph] worked out about $0.27 in the futures side and about $0.30 per contract and the over-the-counter side. Are those rates still applicable? Can you give us an update in terms of what kind of rate per contract you will be charging?

Yes, we could get you the information after the call, but the rates were actually published... lot of rates that we are going to have post transition are equal to what the LCA trades are today. So Chris we can get you that information, as I don't have everyone of the rates right now in front of me but we can get you that list of rates and it's available to anyone who needs it.

It appears to be roughly in line with kind of in terms of bonded overall with.... originally we come back into?

The clearing rates haven't really changed much till yet.

Thanks a lot.

We'll go next to Mike Carrier with UBS.

Thanks. Just actually another question on the clearing, and here we are on tough to predict tough to predict volumes. But it looks like your annual revenue should be in the $70 million, $90 million range and that was up from on the original I think $60 million guidance, So besides the growth in the business and if your fee rates are unchanged, is that really just the driver of the increase? And then Scott post the Creditex close, should we expect the buy backs to take place in like the next say three to twelve months?

Let me take the first question. So with regards to the guidance, I think we had said originally, $25 million to $30 million and if you just want to do simple math, you can double that and that'll get you a full year run rate and that was on backward looking volume. So, I mean, obviously as we've gotten deeper into the year, we have seen volume growth and so that's I think what enabled us, its holding to the end of low end of the range despite the fact that we lost two months. The other thing I'd tell you that, it's not factored in to the answer I gave earlier that we're particularly excited about. Our OTC cleared revenue, it's still about 87% of the total, that only represents about 15% of our OTC product, the one other Jeff mentioned in his remarks, is we have a great opportunity now that we're going to own the clearing to get more of the OTC products cleared that our customers have told us, they want cleared. So, that's I think a key opportunity for us to grow the OTC business, related to clearing. And I'm sorry, what was your second question, again?

Just on the time back, or the timeline on the buybacks post the Creditex transaction, like should we be expecting the buybacks in the next three to twelve months?

It will... the authorization is over the next twelve months. How that plays out will depend on market condition.

Okay and then Jeff, just one follow-up like the OTC clearing market and the focus with regulators and then based on your discussion. We know the initiative with the broker dealers with the Clearing Corp. Do you think that platform can really handle the industry? Or will there be others and then if so... so what would be the likely timing and whether it's in the CDS market or rather OTC market? Where do you guys see the potential opportunity?

Now, that's a big question because I think buried in there is the understanding that there is a lot of stress on the balance sheet of the major banks globally and there are a lot of over-the-counter markets that have become standardized enough and transparent enough that they probably are clearable. And as a minimum they are nettable or compressible. But probably clearable. So, of all the over-the-counter markets that have yet to go through clearing, credit in our mind is one of the smaller ones. There are other OTC opportunities that all of the exchanges and ICE, particularly are looking at and talking to various market participants about. In terms of the Clearing Corp., I mean it's got all the right pieces there. I mean it's got the right owners, it's got a commitment by the Board to make it work, it's got the systems that only, I don't know what... seven years, eight years ago, it was the largest clearing corporation in the world I think. So from that history everything is there. Business is about execution, however, not ideas and it remains to be seen how people execute on that. I don't think that it's necessarily going to be exclusive. I think these are big markets and there's going to be a lot of opportunity for various venues to come up with various products and specialize, and we've have seen particularly in the case of ICE, versus Nymex that we have been able to provide similar, but slightly different offerings that has been able to attract various parts of the market in each one of us. Together, we have been able to grow the market, together we have been able to grow each other by the arbitrage that's created between the two things that we do. And so, I don't think that's necessarily the Clearing Corp. is going to be the exclusive post-trade service. It will be an important one, I suspect and one that has a lot of attention right now, but we are planning for the long run, and looking at other opportunities that could exist outside of Clearing Corp., as are major market participants with us.

Okay, thanks, guys.

We will take our final question from Don Vendetti with Citigroup.

Hi, good morning, quick question. Jeff your over-the-counter, average daily commissions were very strong in July year-over-year. It's given on the volatility and what we see on Nymex, we are a little surprised it wasn't stronger in July on a sequential basis?

I know that it's a hard market in your opposition to predict. And it certainly has a correlation with what goes on in Futures markets, but coming up with that exact correlation that's the secret for us that I am not sure that anybody could... can figure out. We do have some certain market maker programs in some products. So the number that we show you is a net number. And so you are trying to correlate volume out of Futures in the OTC and the reality as we report revenue. So you see the net. So it further complicates that. But no I think, there has been a lot of dislocations right now in the market in the Futures market there with the talk on Capitol Hill, I think people that trade Futures, there may have been some people actually exiting the Futures market or hold reducing positions in the Futures market, which will lead the volume growth. But that's not necessarily a healthy growth, when people leave your markets or when people go bankrupt. Those are not market share numbers that I think are that should be touted by people, because they are really precursors to smaller Future growth. So, it wasn't surprising for us. We really are seeing a lot... there were lot of one-time looking impact that were going on in the market this summer. And it looks like there's a very fair sentiment right now in the crude market. So it may be that prices stay flat, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks when Congress comes back, the group of ten who were proposed were ten bipartisan senators who were proposed supply and demand and investment regulation in energy will be debated, I suspect and will also filtered into presidential politics a bit. And, so I think some of the extreme kinds of things that happened this summer will be out of the market. That's our hope not that it would.

Okay, thank you.

And the other point that I'd make is July of last year was the second best month we'd ever have in OTC and this time when we still managed to grow the total 50% on a year-over-year basis.

Good point. Thank you.

That concludes today's question and answer session. I would like to turn the call over to Jeff Sprecher for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining us today and we look forward to talking to you again in the near future.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at this time.