Nybot pact with Mumbai exchange
                                                  - By Kevin Morrison
The Financial Times
Published: February 22 2006

The New York Board of Trade and the Multi Commodity Exchange of India said yesterday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to explore areas of co-operation in agricultural commodities.

The agreement is the latest the exchanges have signed in recent years.

Nybot, the home of raw sugar, cotton, coffee, cocoa and frozen orange juice trading in the US, has signed similar agreements with commodity exchanges in Brazil and China in the past three years.

"This new agreement allows both exchangesto gain through mutualefficiencies and develop new and promising businessventures together," said Joseph O'Neill, senior vice-president at Nybot.

The MCX is one of two commodity exchangesto emerge in India thisdecade
after an easing of investment rules that has stimulated futures trade
there.

Last year it agreed alliances with the London Metal Exchange and the Baltic Exchange.

It is a shareholder in the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange.

Nybot has been recording record volumes as increasing numbers of financial institutions invest in commodities.

Its sugar contract has experienced some of the biggest increase in volume.

India is the world's largest sugar consumer, and is asignificant consumer ofcotton.

"We look forward to working with Nybot to help the Indian cotton and sugar industries to hedge their price risk more
efficiently," said Jignesh Shah, managing director at MCX.

The Mumbai exchange said it averaged a daily turnover of about $1.25bn.