The National Stock Exchange and the FTSE Group, a global leader in index services, said in a joint statement that they were in advanced discussions for licensing of FTSE 100 index to the Indian bourse.

"NSE and FTSE are in advanced talks with respect to the licensing of FTSE 100 to NSE for facilitating launch of derivative contracts trading on FTSE 100 in NSE," they said. They also termed as baseless the reports that FTSE sees no possibility of any association between NSE, as the Indian bourse had a joint venture with S&P.

FTSE and S&P compete with each other in the global index market. These two are the leading players in the business of creation and management of indices globally. Indian bourses are likely to soon start trading in large indices of leading exchanges from across the world.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) last month gave green signal to domestic exchanges to offer trading in derivatives contracts of key indices or 24 stock exchange from across the world.

However, UK-based bourse LSE is not in the approved list since derivative trading is not conducted in that bourse. Still, derivative trade in the London exchange's benchmark index FTSE 100 can be launched on Indian bourses as the index is traded on many other global exchanges, which are part of the Sebi-approved list of 24 bourses.