CHICAGO, Ill. — Officials with the CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange, announced last week they have applied to open a derivatives exchange in London, United Kingdom, and said this wouldn’t negatively impact its operations in the United States.

CME operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange. The application for a London exchange was filed earlier this month with the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and CME officials hope to have it up and running my mid-2013.

It would initially offer only CME’s existing 56 packages of currency futures. But CME’s biggest growth potential is in Europe, and company officials have been eyeing expansion into the market for several years. The move is timed now in part because European policymakers are seen as being keen on competition; earlier this year they rejected a merger plan between Europe’s largest exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange’s Liffe and Deutsche Boerse’s Eurex.

Those two exchanges now control about 90 percent of total world trading in some European contracts, including short-term interest-rate futures in London and bond futures in Frankfurt. European business accounts for about one-fifth of CME’s overall business now.

Terry Duffy, CME executive chair and president, said in announcing the application, “We continue to see an increase in business coming from our diverse set of customers in Europe, with more than 20 percent of our volume now originating from the region.

“Having an exchange in London that can leverage the central counterparty model of CME Clearing Europe will allow us to align ourselves even more closely with our regional customers in both listed futures and over-the-counter markets, and provide additional opportunities to our expanding non-U.S. customer base.”

A London exchange would be CME’s first solely-owned in an overseas market, although it has long held interests in several foreign exchanges, including in Brazil and Dubai. Earlier this summer, it began offering Black Sea region wheat futures on its Globex platform.

Malaysia native, Phuplinder Gill, took over as CME’s CEO earlier this year and pledged the company would become more of an international player. “We’re talking about a brand new set of clients that would not otherwise trade on CME,” Gil said. “We are not talking about existing clients that are going to shift their business.”

He said CME will stick to currency futures initially and then add contracts tied to commodities and other assets such as metals at some later time.

The application comes on the heels of CME’s failed year-long takeover bid of the London Metal Exchange. The com-pany’s other presence in London has been a clearinghouse for swaps, which serves to deal with the risks of trading complex derivatives.