Central counterparty auction design

We analyze the role of auctions in managing the default of a clearing member in a generic central counterparty (CCP). We first consider three established alternative sealed bid auction formats in which clearing members simultaneously submit bids for a defaulting clearing member’s portfolio: first price without penalty, first price with penalty, and first price with budget constraints. Under our assumptions regarding bidders’ behaviour, although the revenue of the portfolio by the CCP might be the same for these auction formats mentioned above, there could be significant differences in the externalities arising from each of them. Additionally, this paper considers how mechanisms to incentivize competitive bidding could, in some circumstances, have adverse implications for financial stability by inefficiently distributing losses to surviving clearing members. In response to these potential adverse implications, we propose a fourth auction type — second price with loss sharing — which takes into account a bidder’s consideration that may bear part of the CCP’s losses.