Head of Euronext Stéphane Boujnah plans to challenge Eurex’s dominance as the largest European derivatives market after he moves his clearing from London-based LCH to the Italian clearing house he bought earlier this year as part of Euronext’s acquisition of Borsa Italiana.

Speaking on the fringes of a press conference in Milan on Monday, the chief executive and chairman of the managing board of Euronext said his decision to invest in Milan-based clearing house CC&G to make it a pan-European clearer was partly driven by his ambition to expand in derivatives.

Boujnah told Global Investor: “We believe clients want an alternative to Eurex everywhere and not only in the limited number of derivative products we are selling in France and the Netherlands. We want to be a proactive alternative to Eurex. That is a clear ambition and not being dependent on a supplier is going to be an accelerator for us to develop our derivatives strategy.”

The chief executive’s comments came as he announced on Monday Euronext’s strategic plan, named Growth for Impact 2024, which aims to establish the group as the “leading market infrastructure in Europe”.

A key feature of the strategic plan is to develop CC&G, which currently handles only Italian equities, to support Euronext’s various European stock and derivatives markets, and then move Euronext’s clearing book to CC&G from its currently supplier LCH.

Boujnah said: “We are currently just a client of LCH whereas we’d prefer to enhance massively to make this Italy-only clearing house a European clearing house rather than staying in an improved client-supplier relationship .”

Euronext signed in 2017 a ten-year clearing deal with LCH to use its Paris-based clearing house LCH SA as its sole clearing provider until 2027. LCH is part of the LSE Group that sold Borsa Italiana to Euronext in April this year.

The chief executive added: “What is happening today is a normal consequence of the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group. When we structured the partnership with the LSE for ten years in 2017, we told them if we ever buy a clearing house, we want an exit-window, so we have in our contract regular, calendar-defined exit-windows.”

The Euronext chief said moving its clearing from LCH to the enhanced CC&G, which will be rebranded Euronext Clearing, involves contractual negotiations with LCH, a significant technology investment in CC&G as well as talks with regulators and clients.

Boujnah said the launch of Euronext Clearing is just one of his immediate strategic objectives: “The core data centre will be delivered in June 2022, we will deliver the migration to Optiq in 2023 and then we will have the migration to clearing.”

The group has already announced its plan to switch in June next year its main data centre to Bergamo near Milan from Basildon near London and to move Borsa Italiana’s markets to the Euronext Optiq trading technology from its current LSE Group platform in the middle of 2023.

Euronext said in its strategic presentation on Monday it could serve notice on its agreement with LCH as early as 2023 and “CC&G will offer clearing services to all Euronext markets” in 2024.

The European exchange group said on Monday it has increased its run-rate pre-tax synergies related to the Borsa Italiana acquisition to €100m (£85.4m) from the previous guidance of €60m.

Euronext also said the total implementation costs relating to the Growth for Impact 2024 plan are estimated at €160 million “of which one half will be in operating costs and one half in exceptional costs”.

Boujnah completed in late April the €4.4 billion (£3.2bn) acquisition of Borsa Italiana Group from the LSE Group, by-far the largest takeover in Euronext’s history.

The Euronext chief executive, who assumed that role in 2015, said in October the exchange group was considering investing in CC&G with a view to moving its clearing to the Italian clearing house, but no decision had been taken at that time.

Euronext currently offers equity index and agricultural futures and options which traded about 15 million lots in September, according to the group.

Frankfurt-based Eurex is the largest derivatives market in Europe, and traded some 180 million lots of currency, equity and interest rate derivatives in September, according to the exchange.