MEPs’ new MiFID probe reignites dark trading debate

The European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee has issued a questionnaire on MiFID II ahead of its first meeting to discuss the new legislation, which has been confirmed for 5 December.
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The European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) has issued a questionnaire on MiFID II ahead of its first meeting to discuss the new legislation, which has been confirmed for 5 December.

The questionnaire was issued by Markus Ferber MEP, the rapporteur responsible for the ECON committee’s review of MiFID. The deadline for responses is 13 January 2012.

The questionnaire looks at all aspects of the European Commission’s proposed changes to MiFID, including its scope, organisation of markets and trading, investor protection and transparency.

It asks for opinions on whether the organised trading facility (OTF) – a new classification of trading venue introduced by MiFID II to capture broker crossing networks (BCNs) and new markets that are set to emerge for OTC derivatives – is appropriately defined. The paper also asks whether the OTF category will result in the channelling of OTC equity trades on to organised venues.

The ECON committee’s review of the EC’s proposed text is likely intensify the debate on how dark trading is regulated.

Speaking to theTRADEnews.com earlier this year, Ferber stressed the need for the MiFID review to target “unregulated dark trading”, referring to the fact that many BCNs are not classified under MiFID and are therefore not subject to the same rules as regulated markets and multilateral trading facilities. However, he also cast doubt on the merits of a new trading venue category, stating that this would “only create new loopholes”.

Fellow MEP Kay Swinburne also stressed the need to bring more trading on exchange in an own-initiative paper she published in November last year.

Once ECON has tabled its amendments to the MiFID II proposals presented by the European Commission in October, the Council of the European Union will then conduct its own reading of the text.

ECON and the Council of the European Union will then have to agree a final version of the directive with input from the European Commission in a series of trialogue discussions. The new version of MiFID II is expected to come into force during 2013.

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