From January 3, 2017, the revised MiFID II Directive and the new MiFIR Regulation will apply throughout the EU, with major implications expected for market participants: trading venues, investment firms and their clients.

"The updated European legislation will fundamentally reshape European financial markets. This has significant implications for the majority of our clients in the region and for any firm with trading activities in the EU," said Jonas Hansbo, Chief Strategy Officer, Orc Group. "Our MiFID II initiative will help ease the regulatory burden on Orc clients, so that they can focus on trading and business essentials. In addition, we are building innovative solutions to help clients capture opportunities as the new European market structure emerges."

Orc has already established a dedicated Market Structure Strategy team for the mission to advise clients on market trends and regulatory matters, while building an enhanced solution which combines compliance with high performance and business-driven functionality. This development covers Orc's Trading Bricks and Execution Bricks platforms, with the goal to deliver turn-key, tailored solutions that are fully MiFID II-enabled.

Orc's development efforts are focused on key areas where MiFID II introduces fundamental changes in the European market structure, and conducted with the common design objective to allow implementation with minimal impact on existing trading infrastructure.

MiFID II calls for a significantly increased volume of regulatory reporting and monitoring, resulting in a potentially excessive data collection workload. Orc's recently announced partnership with OneTick adds new data management and analytics capabilities to help clients meet the stringent demands on reporting and proof of Best Execution.

Orc will integrate these new capabilities in a fully hosted and managed solution, Orc Analyst. This solution will collect and consolidate order/trade data to secure fully compliant reporting and monitoring. Orc Analyst will be out-of-the-box compatible with existing trading solutions, including Orc Trader, Orc Liquidator, Orc Tbricks and any other system enabled for FIX drop copy of orders and trades in real time. This enables firms to stay on top of all MiFID II requirements regarding market abuse, reporting and execution quality.

Additional MiFID II-related development will address specific trading functionality, such as updating of algorithmic trading tools, adjusting matching and quoting engines to include Systematic Internalisers and other new market models to provide Best Execution.

The revised transparency rules on pre-trade and post-trade information and market data feeds will have immediate effects on trading platforms, processes and strategies. Another change brought by MiFID II are new obligations for market makers, a vital function served by tailored Orc solutions.

"Aside from delivering solid trading technology to ensure client success in the new regulatory landscape, Orc's expertise also makes us the preferred speaking partner for clients on their transition to MiFID II," said Christer Wennerberg, Head of Market Structure, Orc Group. "One area where the new regulation is certain to have a great impact is OTC trading, for both equities and non-equities, which will be significantly curtailed as MiFID II applies a narrower OTC definition, forcing more volume to regulated venues. For many firms, this is quickly becoming a strategic issue beyond trading technology where Orc can add real value as an adviser."