“All softs contracts are now under one roof,” said Michael McDougall, a senior vice president in New York at Societe Generale SA’s Newedge Group, a member of both ICE Europe and ICE Futures U.S. “It seems to be the general trend with futures exchanges that we’re seeing a concentration. That means less competition. Whether it’s a good or bad thing, time will tell.”

London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange, or Liffe, was founded to trade derivatives such as interest rate futures in September 1982, four years before the U.K. financial market was deregulated in the so-called Big Bang. At the time, it was based in the Royal Exchange, a 16th-century-old building that now houses shops.

Floor Trading

Softs and agricultural commodities were added following a merger with the London Commodity Exchange in 1996. Floor trading ended in November 2000, following the introduction of electronic trading.

Euronext acquired Liffe in 2002, and was then taken over by NYSE five years later to form NYSE Euronext. ICE assumed control of Liffe after the acquisition of NYSE Euronext in November.

“They have now the franchise for tropical markets, including coffee, sugar and cocoa and this gives them more pricing power on the fees they charge,” said Jack Scoville, a vice president at Price Futures Group in Chicago who has been trading softs since 1981. “If they get too outrageous, they might face stiffer competition.”

ICE committed in March 2013 to capping trading fees for coffee, sugar and cocoa futures at the same level as its energy contracts for five years after its takeover of NYSE Euronext. Exchange and clearing fees will remain unchanged at 53 pence for the screen-traded softs transactions, according to a Liffe notice dated Aug. 27, following the migration to ICE Futures Europe. Fees on wholesale trades will be reduced to 87 pence per transaction, effective Oct. 1, from 1.03 pound currently.

Cocoa Contract

CME Group Inc. (CME), the biggest derivatives exchange, is working on a cocoa contract for CME Europe in London and competing with Liffe cocoa, Tim Andriesen, the Chicago-based company’s managing director of agricultural commodities and alternative investments, said in June. This month, CME hired Robin Dand as a senior director, registrar. He previously was at Liffe as a product manager, and worked on Liffe’s advisory group for cocoa.

Robusta and white sugar rose today on ICE Futures Europe. Robusta advanced 0.4 percent and white sugar climbed 0.9 percent, while cocoa was little changed.

To contact the reporter on this story: Morgane Lapeyre in London at mlapeyre(at)bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter atccarpenter2(at)bloomberg.net Philip Revzin, John Deane