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Charlie McCreevy |
The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFiD) will transform the landscape for securities trading by introducing much-needed competition throughout Europe’s financial markets. So said Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, in his latest public statement to the European financial community. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Association of Corporate Treasurers in London, the much-travelled McCreevy reiterated the benefits of the "single passport" whilst also committing to a balanced, proportional and sensible set of regulations.
These measures, "an effective single passport for investment firms, allowing them to operate across the EU as well as across a wide range of financial instruments and investment activities on the basis of one single regulation" will reduce regulatory cost and complexity and protect both investors and firms. However, these benefits will only accrue if national authorities avoided the temptation to "gold plate" – to introduce local regulatory complexities and to augment local constraints and requirements. To counter this, the EC has introduced an "anti-gold plating" clause to protect against such complications unless they can be rigorously justified in terms of investor protection or market integrity.
In two separate announcements last week, Telekurs, the market data and technology vendor announced that it would be releasing and a new platform for the collection and dissemination of market data, whilst Investmaster launched a MiFID-prepared order management and routing system, OMR2. Telekurs’ new offering will satisfy the MIFID requirements of trade data transparency, whilst OMR2 will help investment firms tackle their best-execution requirements in carrying out multi-channel and multi-market trading.
The inevitability of MIFID increases, with service and software providers offering new services, exchanges repositioning to capture the post-MiFID markets, and, albeit slowly, firms looking to make commercial capital out of the expected market upheaval. The UK regulator, the FSA, has said that firms cannot expect much more guidance that they have now. McCreevy repeats at every opportunity the EC’s determination that MiFID will go ahead as planned. Looks like there is little reason to delay.
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