Its aim is to create a wider transparent European market with liquidity to compete with the US and other markets. It impacts the entire EU investment industry and is the most intrusive European regulation seen to date.

MiFID's objective of helping issuers and investors by opening up markets and cutting costs will heavily impact IT environments in the entire financial services industry and different markets will be more ready than others to embrace the new guidelines. It is for this reason that DSTi has amassed a team of European experts in a dedicated MiFID taskforce that has now issued a Solutions Matrix to MiFID. DSTi's recently added Integrated Trade Execution Management solution is in this context the final piece of the DSTi MiFID jigsaw.

John Kirkby, Head of the MiFID Programme states: "Since its very early stages MiFID has been a market event that we have followed closely as it has a huge impact on our numerous clients around Europe. The state of readiness is quite different per country and per institution. We see large players for whom this is a good opportunity for a staged systems' overhaul, adding specific features such as Execution Management. At the same time we have had meetings with smaller niche firms that now need to take their operations to the highest professional level in order to benefit from the wider market. We believe that as stakeholders in this industry we must ensure that our clients are never held back by their operations; hence this pro-active MiFID Programme and our Solutions Matrix to cover every angle of the financial services industry that is touched by MiFID."