By Patrick Chambeau, Director of Marketing, IPC
Were you in Paris last week? If you were, you may be aware that, for the first time, the FIX organization hosted a one day event in the La Defense area of the ‘City of Light’ where industry leaders gathered to discuss top challenges and trends impacting the FIX Trading community.
Representatives from regulatory bodies, including M. Philippe Guillot from the AMF (Autorités des Marchés Financiers), were in attendance, along with top European buy-side and sell-side firms, asset managers, investment banks, liquidity venues, and exchanges.
The event featured thought-provoking presentations and debate-focussed panel sessions by some of the industry’s most influential executives who explored the current state of the French market structure. Specific topics discussed included why firms have chosen the Systematic Internalisers route, how trade reporting for MiFID II will change and the impact of Brexit on the trading landscape.
Having been to a number of trading summits recently, it wasn’t a surprise that the opening session focussed on the forthcoming MIFID II implementation. However, this time, discussions gravitated around the core business of the participants and not about how they would cope with MiFID II throughout 2018.
Why? Because, it’s business first!
Whilst MiFID enforced transparency and reporting, MiFID II will take this one step further, imposing even greater transparency and more stringent transaction reporting requirements. Interestingly, the attendants largely agreed that these regulations are necessary, but shouldn’t be viewed as a burden. Instead, they should be regarded as a competitive advantage. Indeed, increased reporting will generate more data, which can be analyzed and utilized to gain insight into, and ultimately improve, business processes.
Other key takeaways from the event included:
- The buy-side is becoming more powerful and will continue to be
- Buy-side requires the best execution framework
- Participants need to be ahead of the curve with early investment in low-latency data
- There’s a growing need for automation
- More power will be given to ESMA on the regulatory landscape
- Market fragmentation is still a reality; there’s no one size fits all
With MiFID II pending, firms unsurprisingly want to understand how they can maintain constant market access and liquidity, whilst still remaining competitive and controlling their costs. Improvements in operations, productivity and efficiency remain key challenges, but there’s a clear consensus that with creativity, imagination and forward-thinking, the financial markets will be able to navigate these developments.
The France Trading Briefing was a great industry event, and provided a unique opportunity to hear thought leaders discussing the highly anticipated MiFID II, as well as MIFID III and future trends in the financial markets. The fact it was hosted in my hometown was an added bonus.
Our participation allowed us to highlight IPC’s unique holistic approach in helping counterparties to connect, exchange information, mitigate risks and leverage the cloud to benefit from the new challenges generated by data requirements and other emerging business needs.
