The CME Group has put a system upgrade and a new trading facility at the centre of a two-pronged defence strategy against an upstart derivatives exchange that has claimed it can successfully break the CME's 'monopoly' on US treasury bond futures market.

The CME Group has tried to offset future competition from the unnamed exchange by launching an upgrade to its existing CME Globex electronic trading platform, which intends to slash the time it takes to trade a futures transaction.