TP ICAP launches Western Australia Gas Desk in Perth, strengthening domestic market connectivity. 03 Aug 2026 Perth, Australia, 3 August 2026 - TP ICAP, a leading global provider of market infrastructure and data solutions, today announces the launch of its Western Australia (WA) Gas Desk, expanding its Energy and Commodities (E&C) business into Perth and positioning the firm at the centre of Australia's largest gas producing region. The new desk will provide dedicated brokerage services to the WA domestic gas market, supporting improved liquidity, price discovery and market transparency. While Western Australia underpins a significant share of Australian national gas supply, much of its production is tied to exports and LNG processing, leaving a less intermediated domestic market and a clear opportunity for enhanced connectivity. Kellee Campbell, Divisional Director, Energy & Commodities, Australia & New Zealand, TP ICAP said: "Western Australia is a critically important market with strong fundamentals and growing demand for transparency and efficient price formation. By establishing a dedicated desk in Perth, TP ICAP Group is bringing global expertise and local presence together to support clients with improved access to liquidity and more effective risk management. As the market continues to evolve, its focus is on connecting participants, enhancing trading efficiency and helping shape a more transparent and resilient domestic gas market." Building on its established presence in Australia's eastern gas market, ICAP will bring global expertise, deep client relationships and proven execution capabilities to support Western Australian producers, utilities, industrial users and traders across the region. The launch also represents a key milestone in TP ICAP's broader E&C growth strategy, expanding its footprint in APAC, diversifying its offering and strengthening its role in the development of regional energy markets. The new desk is based in Perth and is now operational. About TP ICAP Group plc Through its people and technology, TP ICAP connects buyers and sellers in global financial, energy, and commodities markets. TP ICAP Group is a world-leading provider of liquidity and data solutions, with a portfolio of businesses that provide broking services, data & analytics, and market intelligence that are trusted by clients globally. TP ICAP Group operate from more than 60 offices across 28 countries, supporting brokers with award-winning technology. www.tpicap.com

TP ICAP's Bell: clearing is the unsolved problem in the race to 24/7 trading. The energy broker veteran warns that the industry is sprinting toward round-the-clock trading without answering the harder question of how clearing keeps up - and reflects on a March that tested every pipe in the system. LONDON (JLN) - July 14, 2026: Liam Bell has watched the commodity markets transform around him, and his verdict is that the industry has never been better at handling the pressure - but may be running ahead of its own infrastructure in the rush toward continuous trading. "We can open up trading for 24/7," said Bell, global head of energy broking at TP ICAP, in an interview with FOW's Radi Khasawneh filmed by a John Lothian News video team at the FIA International Derivatives Expo in London. "Can we open up clearing? And if we can't open up clearing 24/7, how long has it got to be closed for? We haven't really discussed that." The interview, part of a special JLN Industry Leader video series produced in partnership with FOW and shot at the Park Plaza London Westminster Bridge during IDX 2026, ran from post-trade settlement headroom through the March volatility episode, the energy transition's regulatory complications, and a career philosophy built around the primacy of human connection in a screen-saturated industry. A market that no longer looks like itself. Bell opened with a structural observation that frames everything else he said: the commodity markets no longer primarily consist of producers and consumers hedging physical exposure. Hedge funds and CTAs have become the dominant source of flow, and the composition of a typical block ticket has shifted accordingly. "Traditionally, it will be a user and a producer on either side of that," he said. "Now, more likely it's a fund and a producer because of this change in the client dimension where the physical is no longer the important thing. They're looking to get access to the price, get access to liquidity." Bell framed this as unambiguously positive. Commodities markets are still considerably smaller than equities and fixed income, but the pace of volume growth is accelerating, which benefits exchanges, execution brokers like TP ICAP, and clearers across the board. The practical consequence for the broker's role, he argued, is that price discovery has become more rather than less important, because fund-oriented clients care primarily about where a deal should be priced, not about the underlying physical logistics. "The buyer and the seller are very interested in doing a deal, but they don't know themselves where that deal should be priced," Bell said. "That value that we're giving to the clients now is unmistakably important." March was a test the industry passed. Bell devoted significant time to the geopolitical shock that hit energy markets in early March 2026, when missile strikes on Dubai and Iran triggered a weekend of pent-up price movement that could not be absorbed in cleared markets until Sunday night when the CME opened, followed shortly by ICE. "There was a lot of demand there trying to get into positions, get out of positions," he said. "And I think the clearinghouses, the exchanges all did very well in maintaining that." He was careful to note that the performance was not accidental. It reflected years of incremental improvement in how exchanges, clearing houses, execution brokers, and clearing brokers coordinate under stress. The key behavioral change he identified is that firms now actively manage headroom - their capacity buffer relative to current volume - in a forward-looking way that was not the norm a decade ago. "Clients want to place the orders and they want to get filled. They don't want to hear that there's a problem with the pipes. They don't want to hear that the trade didn't get filled." Margin models are getting smarter and cheaper. Bell offered a measured endorsement of the ongoing industry transition away from SPAN margining to more sophisticated methodologies across clearing houses, calling it a positive development for market structure rather than a source of risk inflation. "Margins now are more intelligent and cheaper," he said. "When margins become cheaper - and that's not merely increasing risk here, it's just becoming a better calculation in terms of risk - that then allows clients to put on more volume. They can take bigger positions because the margins against those are cheaper than they were last week, last month, last year." The energy transition requires a securities mindset. Bell addressed the challenge that carbon certificates and other energy transition instruments pose for a firm built around commodities derivatives workflows. The fundamental problem is settlement architecture, he said. Carbon certificates - unlike a futures or options contract on energy or power - settle more like securities than like commodity derivatives. TP ICAP's commodities infrastructure is built for one paradigm; certificates require the other. "We've had to look at ourselves and say, where's the best place to process these new markets?" Bell said. "We in commodities are best placed to handle the instrument, but we need to retrain to understand how security settlement works, because we need to be able to transition that certificate from A to B." Two exchanges, two interpretations, one problem. Regulatory reporting emerged as a source of quiet operational friction. Bell pointed specifically to divergent approaches between ICE and the LME in how they interpret and implement reporting requirements, forcing TP ICAP to maintain two parallel workflows for what is substantively the same regulatory obligation. "ICE of their view, LME of their view, we're having to basically produce two ways of working for the same problem," he said. He was candid that regulatory reporting compliance can slow product launches, and that firms face pressure to let commercial momentum override that constraint. Bell's view is that the constraint must hold. "The FCA or the AMF want to see clean reporting. They want to see it accurately and they want to see it timely. Products may have to be delayed because we can't get the reg reporting right. We've got to make that decision." The clearing gap that nobody is talking about. Bell's sharpest observation was on 24/7 trading - specifically on the asymmetry between trading hours and clearing hours that the industry has not yet resolved. He noted that the CME already closes clearing while keeping trading open in certain windows, with trades flowing into clearing the following session. Extend that gap across a weekend and the consequences compound: more margin required, more collateral cost, more treasury pressure. The alternative - fully 24/7 clearing as well as trading - requires clearing members to receive and process end-of-day files and data at a point in the cycle that does not currently exist if there is no cycle. "There needs to be a timeline when clearing does close," Bell said. "You've got to move into the next day. You've got to be able to produce files and data for the clearing members. But that gap's got to be small, and I don't think we've really got to the point yet where we've really discussed about how clearing is going to adapt to the trading of 24/7." He also raised the demand-side question directly: is the liquidity actually there outside of crisis moments? For equities, perhaps. For oil on a typical Saturday afternoon, probably not - unless it is March 1st. On screens, teams, and passion. Bell's advice to young professionals entering the industry drew on the same underlying conviction that runs through his analysis of market structure: relationships and judgment are the durable competitive advantage, not proximity to a terminal. "You've got to get away from your screen. You've got to get away from your office and you've got to meet people," he said. "If someone coming into the industry thinks that they can be successful just by being behind a PC in their office, I don't think this industry is for them." He described managing seven globally distributed teams and said the ability to fit into a team - including adapting to different local cultures and dynamics - is as important as any technical skill. The technical skills themselves must stay current; in a world changing as fast as this one, failing to adapt is simply not a viable strategy. But the quality he returned to last was the one he considered irreducible: "The P word is the most important thing. You've got to have passion. You've got to have passion for the job you're doing. Have passion for the industry that you're in. And if you don't have that, then maybe you're in the wrong job." This interview was produced as part of a special JLN Industry Leader video series, a joint production of John Lothian News and FOW, filmed at the FIA International Derivatives Expo 2026 in London.