A three-way contest for flexible equity derivatives volume is shaping up between Eurex, Cboe and the giant OTC derivatives market.
Cboe Europe Derivatives (CEDX) said it plans to launch FLEX options in Europe, extending a US product it pioneered in 1993 to let traders negotiate key contract terms, like in bilateral OTC trades —strike, expiry, exercise style and settlement— within the safety of an exchange rulebook and central clearing.
The move directly challenges Eurex’s long-running “flexible contract” facility.
A spokesperson for Eurex told Global Trading: “We are in ongoing conversations with various market participants on our flexible derivatives offering and are exploring options to further enhance it.”
Cboe announced the plan at its risk management conference in Munich. The go-live is targeted for Q1 2026. At launch, CEDX expects to list FLEX on a select set of Cboe equity indices, single stocks, and ETFs, and expand coverage through 2026. All trades will clear at Cboe Clear Europe, its pan-European central counterparty (CCP).
Iouri Saroukhanov, head of European derivatives at Cboe Europe said: “We’re excited to bring Cboe FLEX options to the European market, reflecting our continued commitment to innovation and building a bigger, more efficient and transparent listed derivatives ecosystem across the region.”
FLEX options are designed to give traders OTC-like customisation with some of the exchange transparency and CCP netting, a mix, that Cboe and Eurex say, lowers counterparty, operational and capital costs versus bilateral deals, especially as defined-outcome products and bespoke overlays gain traction among asset managers.
The launch puts Cboe in more direct competition with Frankfurt-based rival Eurex, which has offered flexible contracts since 2005 via its T7 entry service (TES)/off-book workflow. With Eurex flexible contracts, traders can define exercise price, expiry, style, and settlement, and similarly to OTC trades, flexible contracts trades are not disclosed intraday.
As of 15 September, 7.87 million flexible contracts were traded at Eurex year-to-date, versus 213 million total equity option contracts. If the 3% flexible contract share of option volume were extended to open interest, that would imply about US$11.8 billion in flexible-contract OI. Flexible option like OTC are often intended to be held rather than traded, making the actual OI likely to be of this figure. That compares with US$50 billion of OTC European equity-options gross market value (similar to Open Interest value) at the end of 2024 according to the BIS. For US equity OTC options, the BIS figure was US$279 billion GMV. Cboe did not comment on the value of its own FLEX open interest but said its volume have grown from two million contracts traded in 2019 to 35 million so far in 2025.
OTC derivative gross market value is reported by dealers to the BIS at replacement cost which makes a like-for-like comparison with listed derivatives difficult.
A Eurex spokesperson told Global trading: “Eurex sees increased volumes in Flex options, especially in the single equity space, where we are already above last year’s volume. It’s likely that this trend will continue.”
