SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) – DBS on Monday announced that it has started trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s oldest and largest metal bourse.

DBS is the first Asian bank to receive a membership with LME outside London.

With this new membership, DBS’s corporate clients in Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Korea and Hong Kong can now access hedging and financial solutions. They will also be able to tap LME’s storage facilities worldwide to price and hedge metals trades in preferred markets.

DBS received a Category 4 membership, which means it is not a clearing member and must appoint a designated clearing member to clear trades on its behalf. Category 4 members are permitted to trade client contracts in the telephone market and on LMEselect, the electronic member-to-member trading system, and are permitted to issue client contracts.

Located in London, the LME deals in metal futures and options and has a global warehouse network of over 600 approved storage facilities across 33 locations in Europe, USA and Asia.

It is a non-ferrous exchange, which means iron and steel do not trade there. Instead, tradeable contracts include aluminium, copper, gold, silver, cobalt, and zinc.

The global push for a lower carbon economy and the need for efficient and affordable electricity storage will also continue to drive demand for non-ferrous metals, which form critical components in batteries, said DBS’s group head of institutional banking Tan Su Shan.

“The LME membership will provide our clients in the metals and mining space with the option to access sustainably-produced metal, such as low carbon aluminium, as well as metals that play a significant role in global decarbonisation and the circular economy, such as materials used to manufacture electric vehicles and scrap metals,” she said in a media statement on Monday.