Ferber fever strikes TradeTech
If Markus Ferber’s ears were burning last week, no one who attended TradeTech Europe
2012 would have been surprised. The German MEP – who is pushing MiFID and MiFIR
through Brussels with seemingly less and less patience for the industry – was
public enemy number one at London’s ExCel convention centre.
The
amount of people both on stage and off – including the Financial Services
Authority – who suggested that Brussels was forming policy in an “information
vacuum”, was truly astonishing.
Brussels-bashing
has become a national sport in the securities trading world. After several
rounds of consultation, the draft text for MiFID II released by the European
Commission in October, contained several proposals that the industry considered
totally unworkable, leading many to wonder whether their comments had entirely
fallen on deaf ears.
As
the rule-making process continues, it is now the European Parliament’s turn to
engage with market participants, many of whom regard Ferber’s proposals as
detached from the lens through which they view the markets and the reality they
perceive.
For
one, Ferber seems determined to outlaw broker crossing networks and reduce OTC
trading as much as possible. He has proposed an amendment to MiFIR that
shoehorns all OTC equity trading into existing regulated venues.
He
also continues to take a hard line on high-frequency trading.
Discontent
between rule-makers and industry is as far from being resolved as ever and the
buy-side feels they are not being listened to at all.
Although,
one senior-ranking trader I spoke to at TradeTech said he didn’t blame MEPs for
being sick of the industry as the sheer weight of lobbying must be weighing
them down.
From
what is coming out of Brussels, you would be hard pressed believing the
buy-side was not now tarred with the same brush as the banks that were at fault
for the financial crisis.
The
refrain from TradeTech’s speakers and delegates was a frustration at the
‘politicisation’ of the regulatory reform process. When one considers the
relatively harmonious progress of securities and derivatives reforms in
Australia and Singapore for example – notably two markets less badly-hit by the
global financial crisis – it is hard not to disagree.
Bruce Love+44 (0)20 7397 3818bruce.love@thetrade.ltd.uk