If weeks had labels in this industry then this week might well come to be called the "Week of the OTC derivative". Sounds enticing, right? Just like buses, announcements about particular niches in the broader financial world tend to come all at once. Regulations, trading venues, order management systems. Chances are if you see one announcement, two more will follow on its coat tails.

No sooner had trade processing specialist Markit gathered the UK's financial press corps together on Monday to make its DTCC partnership announcement than noises started coming from Frankfurt about Eurex's plans to build a European platform for the clearing of OTC derivatives. In the same week that CME Group announced the September launch of CME Cleared Swaps, a facility for OTC interest-rate swaps that will include central clearing; part of its move into the OTC market that was well-documented in the July issue of Waters.

These three announcements all target separate niches and perhaps most intriguing is Markit's marriage to DTCC and the pair's ambition to create "a single gateway for confirming OTC derivative transactions globally". No small ambition, but if anyone can do it then Markit and DTCC seems to be a pretty solid partnership.

It will be interesting to see how the coming months and years pan out in the arena of trade processing. Affirmations and confirmations are hardly the most glamorous part of the investment process, but there seems to be a steady recognition that if these things aren't sorted out and sorted out effectively, the whole industry will suffer. In novations for example, the process by which derivative contracts are transferred to a different counterparty, major banks have reaped the benefits of moving away from email and phone towards automated platforms. Where large numbers of staff formerly had to spend hours picking through emails and responding to post-trade problems, the whole lot can now be managed by an automated platform, with only the anomalies being flagged up. If such automation spreads across asset classes and filters beyond the top-tier banks, then maybe the conversation will soon shift away from trade processing which is certainly now seen to be the bane of the back office.

So good luck to Eurex, CME and Markit/DTCC. The hats are in the ring and the race is on.