SIX Grouppublished its 2025 annual results today (Tuesday), reporting record adjustedoperating performance across all four business units, but the headline numberstell only part of the story.Join the inaugural Finance Magnates Singapore Summit 2026, which will bring together brokers, fintechs, banks, EMIs, wealth managers, and hedge funds across APAC.Quietlyrunning alongside the revenue growth is one of the more consequentialinfrastructure bets in European post-trade markets: a plan to merge the group'sSwiss and Spanish clearing houses into a single central counterparty and takeon the London-anchored networks that have dominated European clearing fordecades.SIX Group Posts RecordOperating MarginsNetoperating income rose 4.7% to CHF 1,496.5 million, or 5.4% at constant exchangerates. EBITDA, excluding CHF 82.3 million in transformation costs, reached CHF542.3 million, a 22.2% increase from 2024, with a margin of 36.2%, up more thanfive percentage points year-on-year. Adjustedgroup net profit climbed 20.9% to CHF 247.2 million. A CHF 560.9 millionnon-cash write-down on the group's stake in Worldline pushed the reported netresult to a loss of CHF 313.7 million, but SIX said that charge "no longerexposes the financial statements to substantial negative impacts"following the reclassification of the holding to a passive financialinstrument.CEO Bjørn Sibbern said the group's recordoperational results reflect "broad and sustained growth," whilesignaling that executing the Scale Up 2027 transformation program, whichtargets an EBITDA margin above 40%, remains the top priority. Free cash flow improvedto CHF 355.6 million. S&P affirmed its A credit rating with a revisedoutlook from negative to stable. The board proposes an unchanged dividend ofCHF 5.30 per share at the May 6 Annual General Meeting.The CCP Merger Takes ShapeThe formalannouncement came in December 2025, when SIX confirmed it would combine SIXx-clear, its Swiss central counterparty, with BME Clearing, the Madrid-basedCCP it inherited from the €2.8 billion acquisition of Spanish exchange groupBME. The merged entity, to be branded SIX Clearing, will be headquartered inMadrid, with operations in Zurich and Oslo, aiming for regulatory approval andgo-live by 2027.The twoCCPs bring complementary assets to the table. SIX x-clear carriesinteroperability links across pan-European cash equity markets andrelationships with major trading venues. BME Clearing holds a European Unionbanking license, granting direct access to ECB liquidity, which is a criticaladvantage for any CCP competing for eurozone business. Togetherthey already serve five asset classes across 28 trading venues and 18 markets.That breadth underpins SIX's argument that a merged entity would offer genuinescale, not just consolidation for its own sake.This movefits a broader pattern SIX has been building for some time. In December 2024,the group expanded itsinterest rate swap clearing offering with multicurrency capabilities to address EU clearing needs,a step that signaled the group's clearing ambitions extended well beyond itshome markets.In March2025, SIX introduced preferred clearing on Euronext's markets across Paris,Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Dublin, and Milan, competing directly for flowthat typically routes through LCH, owned by London Stock Exchange Group.Baymarkets: Buying theEngine RoomIn November2025, SIX added a technology layer to the CCP strategy by acquiring Baymarkets,a Norwegian company that builds clearing and exchange infrastructure for globalfinancial markets. The purchase, for an undisclosed sum, gives SIX directcontrol over core clearing system architecture as it rebuilds the post-tradestack from the ground up.The logicmirrors the AquisExchange acquisition completedin July 2025, where SIX bought not only a UK trading venue but also a matchingengine it has since selected as the unified platform for its Swiss, Spanish,and UK markets. In each case, the technology was as important as the market.Post-Trade Volumes Tell aDifferent StoryTheSecurities Services business unit, which houses the clearing and custodyoperations, reported a 3.2% decline in net operating income to CHF 439.0million. The cause was almost entirely a 39.3% fall in net interest income toCHF 52.0 million, as central banks cut rates across the year. Coretransaction metrics moved in the opposite direction. Swiss clearingtransactions rose 7.8%, settlement transactions climbed 22.0%, and averageassets under custody grew 6.1% in Switzerland to CHF 4,236 billion. SIX alsocrossed CHF 1 trillion in international custody assets during the year.The October2027 EU, UK, and Swiss transition to T+1 settlement adds a further structuraltailwind. Shorter cycles increase operational pressure on clearinginfrastructure and historically accelerate consolidation among post-tradeproviders. SIX co-leads T+1 working groups in both Switzerland and Spain. The 2027deadline sits directly alongside the SIX Clearing target completion date,compressing the execution timeline but also concentrating the group'spost-trade transformation into a single, high-stakes period.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.