TMX Group announced Q2 results this morning.  Rather than review the figures, I’d like to take a few minutes to look back at the business activities that played important roles in the quarter.

We had a strong quarter across much of our business, and while TMX teams worked hard to bring results and run successful operations, I will concede that some credit must be given to the economic conditions.  Recent months have brought signs of renewed economic activity in Canada, including welcome indicators that Canada is experiencing a more robust recovery than many parts of the world.  It’s widely believed that Canada’s growth will outpace other G8 economies for some time.

The positive economic news certainly contributed to our Q2 results.  Equity financing on our markets continued to be very strong and Toronto Stock Exchange welcomed 45 new issuers, 28 of which were IPOs.  On a year-to-date basis TSX has outpaced the same period in 2009 by more than 150% while TSX Venture Exchange showed an 84% improvement.

In our derivatives business, Montreal Exchange continued its positive momentum with growth in trading volume and the number of open interest contracts, and a record was set for average daily volume.

Montreal Exchange also launched a new futures contract on Canadian heavy crude oil.  Not only does the contract enable MX to position itself in an important segment of the crude oil market in Canada, it demonstrates the key strategic linkages among TMX Group business areas – in this case, NGX and Shorcan Energy.  The first contracts were traded last week – and we look forward to further development of this market.

Natural Gas Exchange also had a strong quarter overall and set a record in June for natural gas volumes.  Crude volumes are also up dramatically compared to 2009.  The future capacity of NGX is promising and they recently announced the establishment of two new natural gas clearing points:  the Alliance Canadian Receipt location in Canada and MichCon in the U.S.  NGX also added two additional trading hubs in the U.S., bringing the total number there to 29.

Our derivatives clearing business CDCC has been working steadily to develop the infrastructure for central-counterparty services for the Canadian fixed income market.  CDCC will deliver the solution to the market place by the end of the year.

In our market data business, all of the information processor products have now been launched with data from all equity marketplaces in Canada.  We also recently cut the ribbon on our new co-location facility.

These achievements are just a sampling of our work to provide new products and services to our domestic and international clients.  Business development teams in all parts of our diversified company will continue to be very active both in Canada and around the world to attract new clients and add shareholder value.  And we will do all of this while we continue to provide healthy marketplaces for investors, the trading community, and our customers.

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