Two of the largest stock exchanges in Europe have boosted the prospect of competition among the clearing houses used by their members to clear trades executed on their markets.

Eurex Clearing, the clearer owned by German exchange group Deutsche Börse, has thrown down the gauntlet to rivals by slashing its fees by a quarter, while the London Stock Exchange, which took ownership of a clearing house for the first time when it bought the Italian exchange group Borsa Italiana in October, has outlined its plan to introduce a new routing service to help clients use multiple clearers.