CESR is now consulting with the industry about what approach should be taken to improving market transparency across the EU. In summary, it would prefer to have an industry-led approach, but if the industry doesn’t respond quickly and appropriately then
CESR will impose a solution on the industry. The impression is that “quickly” means “in the next few weeks”.
At a meeting of market data managers and leaders in London last month, out of around 100 people in the room only about 10 said that they had people working on this issue. Maybe the industry has become so inundated with operational and regulatory changes
that the right people aren’t seeing the wood for the trees – the old story that when you’re up to your neck in alligators, you forget that you’re there to drain the swamp.
I’ve only been around financial market data for the last twenty-five years of my career, but my summary would be that the EU Consolidated Tape topic is going to be the largest single change in the market data infrastructure of the EU that any of us is likely
to see in our career. It’s going to bring changes to market data contracts, market data pricing, market data administration, data distribution and data collection and IT throughout banks, brokers, investment managers and data vendors. It’s also going to
get the industry focusing more on standards for market data than ever before.
This is a big topic in the MiFID Forum, with AFME and the major banks joining in the discussion. Are you assuming that surely somebody else in your organisation must be working on this? Are you feeling lucky? Or do you think that it might be time to pay
some attention to this particular regulatory alligator before it turns around and bites you?