Phupinder Gill, president of CME Group Inc

Gill participated in the development of the SPAN system and oversaw virtually every function performed by the clearing house, including audits, trade processing and collateral management.

"When I was in charge of risk management, I went to work at 4 am every day. The first thing I did for my daily work was provide stress tests for the exchange members. I would like to give extreme hypothetical situations in the testing, like a sudden drop of 25 percent for the stock index, and make sure that the members could not default," Gill said.

CME Group is unique in that it does a mark-to-market margin calculation twice a day, while other companies only do it once.

According to Gill, on the day that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc collapsed in 2008, during the subprime mortgage crisis, CME's trading platform operated smoothly. No big defaults happened under the SPAN system.

"At CME Group, I have had the privilege to work with some of the brightest people in the business and have witnessed how these geniuses carried themselves," said Gill.

"The immense lessons that these people have taught me were that the values of perseverance and hard work cannot be substituted when striving for success, and that will be carried by me the rest of my life."

Gill, who was born and raised in Singapore, where more than 70 percent of its population is Chinese, feels no cultural barrier to doing business with Chinese companies.

"Actually, we started cooperation with Chinese exchanges about 20 years ago. Every year, we provided some training programs in China about the benchmark trading platform and risk governance technology. We also invite exchange staff to visit our company in Chicago," he said.

Leo Melamed, former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, who was hailed as the father of financial futures, has visited China many times during the last decade. He helped Chinese regulators launch the first stock index futures in Shanghai-based China Financial Futures Exchange.

"Exchanges in Zhengzhou, Dalian and Shanghai are now very well-managed companies that, in time - given the regulatory environment to support them - will be globally competitive. They will be main providers of the risk management products for global investors," Gill said.

"China's double-figure economic growth has become one of the major drivers of the global economy in the last few years. This growth has fuelled demand for food, fuel, construction materials," he said.

"It has also meant that China is changing from an exporter of manufactured goods to a consumer of the finished products. So, for the foreseeable future, China's appetite for commodities is likely to remain high."

CME Group began offering yuan exchange futures on Oct 17 in order to satisfy the increasing needs of settlements of the currency in global markets. Chinese analysts said this might facilitate the internationalization of China's currency.

The company also plans to launch a clearing house in Asia and increase the number of employees in the region.

"The best is yet to be" is Gill's motto that he learned at school - the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore. "It holds true for most things we do through life," he said.

He said that because fast economic growth in Asia was expected to continue, demand for industrial commodities would increase in the coming months.

Along with the process of globalization in many sectors, especially in the financial world, more risks and fluctuations may emerge, which will require faster innovation in derivative products.

Gill says he is confident about the future business of the CME Group and will never stop seeking out the next opportunity.