The companies’ combined TCA and compliance services span equities, investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, emerging market bonds and Eurobonds.

New York-based ITG is taking “a first step in extending our transaction-cost capabilities across asset classes,” said Ian Domowitz, the firm’s managing director for networking and analytical and research products. “This is probably the best example of an area where we would go into partnership as opposed to trying to develop our own.”

MarketAxess’ compliance tools-offered through its Corporate BondTicker data service-let customers quantify best execution and review credit trading activity, trade exceptions, dealer performance and archived reports.

“As institutional investors continue to look for compliance solutions to monitor their trading activity across asset classes, aligning our capabilities with ITG is an exciting development for us and our clients,” said Richard McVey, chairman and CEO of New York-based MarketAxess, in a statement. “Bringing together Europe.

Clients, he said, will be able to directly access ITG’s TCA products through MarketAxess. ITG says its equities analytics help clients optimize fund performance through global transaction cost assessment, peer group comparison and performance measurement. ITG users access the system via a Web portal or the firm’s execution management systems.

URL: http://www.securitiesindustry.com/

LOAD-DATE: January 5, 2009

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

The Vienna Stock Exchange bought the BCPP for an estimated Kc4.5bn. The BCPP was owned by banking and non-banking brokers but none of them held a majority stake.

Experts say this was a good deal.

“A standard price for a company likey the Prague bourse would be Kc2bn – Kc3bn. Anything above this price can be considered a bonus,” said Pavel Makovec of the firm Arca Capital.

The RM-System was transformed into a bourse owing to the MiFID directive. The directive brought, among other things, an end to the monopoly of national bourses in share trading and improved the position of small clients on the capital market.

The Finance Ministry is of the opinion that the directive has brought the most important changes to the Czech capital market in the last ten years.

Falling share prices made some investors switch to other products. On the other hand, dealers focused on small investors saw an unusual growth in client numbers in the autumn.

“By Czech investors, we have noted a change in behaviour – a shift from traditional share trading to more risky and more profitable financial instruments, such as currencies and currency options,” said Karol Piovarcsy, Saxo Bank manager for Central Europe.

“In the first half of the year, we were glad to have 100 new client contracts a week, and in the autumn there were even weeks when we signed 600 to 700 new contracts,” said Marek Polka of on-line brokerage Fio.

Like before, there was a lack of new share titles. Only mining company NWR of financier Zdenek Bakala made an initial public offering (IPO) in the year.

Vienna Insurance Group picked the Prague bourse as a second market for trading in its stock. Domestic firm Photon Energy chose the Warsaw Stock Exchange for entering the capital market and became the first foreign share issue on the NewConnect market.

It is not much talked about that the domestic capital market, unlike its European counterparts, has no central depository, a standard institution for the settlement of securities deals.

On the other hand, the Prague Securities Centre (SCP), which used to be labelled a complicated, expensive and obsolete institution, moreover originally set up for the needs of the voucher privatisation, has opened the seventeenth year of activities.

fs/er

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 2009

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

JOURNAL-CODE: cte

Czech state budget posted a deficit of Kc19.4bn last year, which is the best result since 1997, the Finance Ministry said today.

Prague – Czech government will submit reworked draft state budget for this year to the Chamber of Deputies already at the end of January, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes today.

Prague – The dispute over gas supplies between Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom and Ukraine should not threaten international agreements on supplies of raw materials to the EU countries, Mirek Topolanek, Prime Minister of the EU presiding country, said today.

Brussels/Prague/Bratislava – An extraordinary meeting of envoys from 27 member countries of the European Union will be held in Brussels on Monday to discuss the dispute over gas supplies between Russia’s energy giant Gazprom and Ukraine, presidency spokesman Radek Honzak told CTK on Friday.
Prague – Svatopluk Sykora is new CEO of the state-owned forest company Lesy CR (LCR) as of January 1 of the year, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) said today, and the information was confirmed to CTK by the Agriculture Ministry.

Prague – Several Czech money market and bond funds showed low yields last year, while mixed funds, funds of funds and equity funds generally registered quite large losses, data from the Capital Market Association (AKAT), valid as of December 26, have shown.

Prague – The Czech crown currency was trading slightly lower at the end of today’s session closing at Kc26.86 per euro and Kc19.29 to the dollar after 17:00, the server Patria Online said.

Prague – Trading volumes on the Prague Stock Exchange (BCPP) were very low today, and the headline index PX added 1.39 percent to close the week at 870.10 points, the bourse said.

Prague – The number of users of domestic Internet servers reached a record 6.32 million in November and was 2.5 percent higher than in October, NetMonitor data published on the web show.

Bratislava – Slovakia’s state budget deficit in 2008 fell by some 10 percent year-on-year to Sk21.21bn (EUR704.04m), the Finance Ministry announced today.
CTK

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 2009

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

JOURNAL-CODE: cte

United World Capital Limited officially launched a new digital identity authentication service called UWCPass available at www.uwcpass.com . The core responsibility of the UWCPass is the collection and retaining of clients’ personal information. A client has to register in the UWC Passport secure system and obtain a unique ID – UWC passport – in order to be able to use any financial service provided by any of our partners.

A unique ID will be used for all of the clients’ operations within the company, which includes working with their trading account(s), money transfers and much more; clients will not need to re-enter their personal data every time, which will help to protect their information.

The main advantages of using the provided User ID are:

. Safety – all personal data is kept in the secure database in the UWCpass system and is provided to authorized partners on consent from the individual client.

. Comfort – each client goes through the process of registration once, entering his/her personal information and then can work with their chosen broker(s) after, using a unique User ID, provided by the system.

. Validity – registration complies with European Union standards and legislation.

United World Capital, Ltd. is an independent international financial markets participant and leading provider of online trading services for retail and institutional investors. This is one of the most respected, fastest growing companies in the industry; it services clients from more than 140 countries around the world.

CONTACT: United World Capital, Ltd.
Ruslan Abuzant, +35725750555
ruslan.abuzant@uwcfx.com

URL: http://www.businesswire.com

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 2009

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DISTRIBUTION: Business Editors; High-Tech Editors

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

The advent in November 2007 of the Markets In Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) aimed at harmonising the regulatory regime for investment services across the 27 member states of the European Union and opening it up to competition did a lot of good work: Plus is one clear beneficiary of this. In 2008, it worked hard to exploit this and prove the viability, transparency, accountability and geographical reach of its platform, establishing a raft of joint ventures and alliances with equal numbers in Europe such as the Munich Stock Exchange, and in Asia-Pacific through the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

In November, it signed an agreement with Washington DC-based Direct Edge, the US’s fourth-largest centre for US equities which is in the process of converting into an SEC-regulated stock exchange, to work together in the future.

In chief financial officer Nemone Wynn-Evans’s mind, 2008 was a year to celebrate for Plus. “Mifid has fundamentally redefined the way securities are bought and sold across Europe there is a myriad of platforms trading securities now,” she says. “There is a huge amount of change and things are very fast moving in our industry; we are going through a process of deregulation and competition.”

There are few other places you might imagine Wynn-Evans to be given her obvious passion for the Plus raison d’Être. She left the London Stock Exchange in 2004, joining fellow defectors Cyril Theret and Alternative Investment Market head and co-founder Simon Brickles for what was then a smaller, family-owned concern, Ofex.

The trio formed the decidedly zippier executive board that replaced the well-respected Jenkins family, to re-create and recapitalise the company as Plus.

Full of life

Expecting her first child in March, and conducting the business half the time in London and the other half from her home in the Midlands, Wynn-Evans’s role is probably the fullest of any in the FTSE-250, comprising the CFO role (full-time since September, interim since April 2008), and heading up the investor and media relations functions and she isn’t a qualified accountant.

“It’s all rather exciting and new. I’ve got no easy answers,” she says to the question of how such a demanding job can be balanced with first-time motherhood and a long commute.

“I have been running teams from home for the past four years, so I’ll scale down and back up when I need to. I will still be dialling into meetings and writing board papers and serving as CFO,” she maintains. “I’m aware it is quite unusual for CFOs to also occupy the communications function. It takes a particular type of person, put it that way.”

Her commitment to the Plus concept is clear: she is taking on the LSE’s Dame Clara Furse and the City establishment to remove the last road-block to becoming cash-generative in 2009, as it has said it intends to be: Plus reported a £2.4m loss in its September 2008 interim statement, alongside revenues of £1.6m for the period. The company is pursuing the London Stock Exchange through the High Court to remove the right LSE’s rulebook gives it to require all trades of securities listed on its markets, but executed anywhere else outside the LSE, to be reported to it. Plus believes this has the effect of preventing trading in Aim securities other than the LSE, and thinks it an abuse of a dominant position in the listings market.

Taking Aim

LSE denies the rule effectively prohibits member firms from executing trades in Aim securities on Plus, and has taken a pop at Plus’s alliance with the Munich exchange, saying it “circumvents the FSA’s regulatory regime” and “deprives Aim companies of any say in where their shares are traded.”

Wynn-Evans argues that companies don’t have a say in that matter anyway and that the venture, allowing dual-trading of Aim securities under the German regulatory authority and Mifid, was launched to get around what it sees as a critical hindrance by the LSE of its objectives.

“Because of its status, Aim wasn’t caught by Mifid, so while free trading without encumbrance is possible for main market securities, it isn’t possible for securities on Aim as they are not governed by Mifid,” Wynn-Evans says. “Our view is that there is no difference between the trading of a large-cap share and the trading of a small-cap share. But because of the legacy infrastructure relating to Aim, those provisions don’t apply. There are some circumstances in which we can trade Aim securities, but they’re very restrictive.”

She expects the challenge to reach trial in the second half of 2009: a ruling in her favour would be as historic for the City and for the LSE as it would be for Plus.

Reputations at stakes

The fight is critical to both Plus’s financial future and its reputation. Plus has spent its four-year existence shuffling off the legacy of Ofex’s reputation, or lack thereof; Ofex was not always taken seriously as a junior stock exchange and never touched the strength of the Aim brand. Plus is working to change City perception, but many still see Aim as the logical home of the mid-cap IPO.

“It might be true to say that it takes time for perceptions to shift when an industry structure shifts,” says Wynn-Evans.

The CFO notes the number of new entrants to its market space in last couple of years, including BATS Europe, Turquoise, whose owners include Morgan Stanley, Société Générale and UBS, and Nasdaq Europe. Wynn-Evans hopes recession will make companies study their options to seek the best deal for a first time or dual listing not just go to the safest, biggest brand.

“As to whether the LSE retains a standing over and above us, bearing in mind we are both recognised investment exchanges in the UK and have identical regulatory status I guess that will be up to the High Court to decide.”

LOAD-DATE: 30 December 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Magazine

Copyright 2008 Incisive Media

“Counterparty risk and settlement certainty dominate the selection process of brokers and venues following the settlement debacle arising in London from the Lehman collapse,” said Guy Sears, director of wholesale markets at IMA, in a statement. Information quality has “significantly deteriorated” under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), which went into effect in late 2007, added Sears.

While a consolidated tape would likely not require that MiFID be altered, an order routing mandate would necessitate some changes. The IMA’s recommendations, developed by a number of its dealer and compliance committees, were released shortly after the European Commission initiated an analysis of market transparency under MiFID. The U.K.’s Financial Services Authority has been working with the IMA on problematic reporting issues and will make its findings public early next year, said a spokesperson for the regulator.

According to the IMA, a consolidated tape-a centralized system for aggregated price reporting-would reduce the amount fund managers spend accessing volume and price data from multiple information providers. By requiring exchanges and multilateral trading facilities to forward orders to any venue with a better price, a routing rule would help firms achieve best execution for their clients.

There are notable differences between the best-execution requirements of MiFID and Reg NMS, which was phased in last year. For one, the onus for compliance under MiFID falls entirely on fund managers and broker-dealers, while Reg NMS calls for trading platforms to shoulder some of the burden in routing orders to other liquidity pools.

Encouraging Competition

According to Sears, a consolidated tape and new order-protection rules would bring greater price transparency, helping to achieve MiFID’s goal of encouraging competition. “While we have managed to foster competition among trading venues, the same has not been accomplished when it comes to orders,” he said. “It is impossible to know whether a trade received a better price on an alternative platform because the money manager does not know where the trade is going.” He did not specify how a consolidated tape system could be created.

When executing trades, U.K. fund managers typically depend on their brokers to access suitable market centers as part of their best-execution obligations. While brokers usually provide a monthly list of trading venues, they aren’t necessarily the most suitable for their clients. For commercial reasons, some brokers won’t even reveal their execution policies to professional clients, said the IMA.

Changes in trade reporting guidelines are making it hard for U.K. fund managers to determine whether their broker-dealers are complying with MiFID. While the European Commission’s previous trade concentration rules required that local exchanges publicly reveal data within seconds of a transaction, trades can now be reported by any venue within three minutes. Firms store data on competing prices to prove they met best execution.

But duplicative reporting by multiple parties in different formats makes trade comparisons difficult, and transaction cost analysis services that monitor execution quality are made unreliable by erroneous reports. “One IMA member found that one trade he executed was reported four times-by his broker, by the exchange, by another side’s broker and by the prime broker,” said the IMA. “He was able to track the trade due to the fact it comprised an odd number of shares. Our members believe the problem lies with reporting brokers rather than the venues.”

Sears cited a block order placed by a fund manager with an executing broker that takes it on as a principal and trades the risk across the order book. “When reported,” said Sears, “the same order might appear as two trades-one between the fund manager and the executing broker as an over-the-counter transaction, and the other between two executing brokers across an order book-making it difficult for the market participants to be clear on the available liquidity.”

Smart Orders

Price transparency may be far from ideal, but implementing a consolidated tape is not the answer, nor are order routing regulations that would be costly to implement, said P.J. Di Giammarino, director of London based think-tank JWG-IT. “Buy-side firms need to come up with better smart-order routing technology on their own and negotiate better execution policies with their broker-dealers,” said Di Giammarino.

Some of the largest European brokers, front-office technology providers and trading venues are offering smart-order routing or considering adding it. “By using smart-order routing technology we have been able to exploit significant pricing opportunities on behalf of our clients,” said Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe. From November 2007 to April, clients of the agency brokerage received price improvement on more than 50 percent of their trades, said Balarkas.

Citigroup is providing Nasdaq OMX Group’s pan-European platform, which launched in September, with order routing services via a high-speed execution platform that includes a market access solution from NeoNet, a technology provider and agency brokerage.

“The choice on how to best achieve best execution should be left open to either a direct or vendor-driven solution by broker-dealers or through trading venues interconnecting,” said Hirander Misra, COO of London-based trading platform Chi-X Europe, operated by Instinet subsidiary Chi-X Global. Misra does, however, agree on the need for a consolidated tape. “Fragmentation has led to an explosion in market data from multiple trading venues,” he said. “Participants want a recognized reference source of data that can be used for reference price benchmarking, indexing and trading through smart-order routing technology across the buy side, sell side and retail community.”

Will Meldrum, managing director at Markit Group, a data and valuation services provider that runs a trade reporting platform for over-the-counter equity transactions, said that a consolidated tape could be useful, but the goal would need to be clear before implementation. “Data is already consolidated on vendor screens such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters,” he said. “While our software could easily create a consolidated tape, such a venture is unlikely to solve concerns around duplicative reporting. The London Stock Exchange, which has historically dominated U.K. trade execution and reporting, has taken a similar stance.”

Acquired by Markit in January from a consortium of banks, 28 firms currently use Markit Boat, including nine of its former owners and trading venue operators Investment Technology Group, Liquidnet and Nyfix. Markit had been acting as business operations manager for the platform since its October 2007 launch. Boat is currently working on a set of best practices with its reporting clients to ease some of their concerns about its data quality and delayed reporting.

In an effort to bolster market transparency, Markit said Dec. 4 that it is teaming up with 11 top dealers to provide an aggregated view of the entire European equities market on the day after a trade is executed, or T+1. Called Markit MSA, the initiative will rank brokers on each trading venue, stock or index according to the volume and value of their trades.

Last month, Fidessa, a London-based technology provider, launched a similar, Web-based MiFID fragmentation index that offers a daily analysis of the fragmentation of liquidity between different stocks, indexes and venues.

URL: http://www.securitiesindustry.com/

LOAD-DATE: December 17, 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newsletter

JOURNAL-CODE: SIN

The key findings are as follows:

Instinet Europe’s SmartRouter(TM) has been enhanced to interact with new trading venues as they have been introduced.The average price improvement¹ when trading on new venues was 6.06 bps for the three month measurement period, rising to 6.58 bps in October 2008, compared to an initial 1.73 bps in November 2007 (the first month of MiFID) and the previous quarter’s (May-July 2008) average of 5.32 bps.

Of the shares traded away from the primary markets on alternative trading venues, Instinet Europe’s clients received price improvement 55.4 percent of the time (by value traded) and executed at the same price or better than found on the primary markets 96.2 percent of the time over the three months.

By value traded, Instinet Europe executions away from the primary markets for UK, French, German and Dutch equities increased to 39.7 percent in October 2008, compared to an initial 11.3 percent in November 2007. For UK equities alone, in October 2008 Instinet Europe executed 45.2 percent of its volume away from the London Stock Exchange, compared to 14.0 percent in November 2007.

Between August and October 2008, Instinet Europe connected to and began successfully trading on both NASDAQ OMX Europe, launched at the end of September, and BATS Europe, launched at the end of October. Additionally, Instinet Europe expects to continue to link to other new liquidity pools as they become available, including NYSE Arca Europe and NYSE Euronext’s SmartPool.

Instinet Europe’s SmartRouter now has access to the following MTFs: BATS Europe, BlockMatch®, Chi-X® Europe, NASDAQ OMX Europe, NYFIX Euro Millennium(TM) and Turquoise. Instinet also continues to connect to a number of broker dark pools.

Commenting on the findings of the Best Execution Review, Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe said, “We believe that both the new and emerging pools of liquidity offer tremendous opportunities for price improvement. We reported average savings of 6.06 bps for our clients during this review period in large part by delivering on our promise to link our clients to each and every liquidity pool to which we are allowed access, and this rose to 6.58 bps in October 2008 from an initial 1.73 bps back in November 2007. Over the 12 months since MiFID was introduced, this approach has allowed Instinet to pass on the full benefit of price improvement when trading on the new execution venues. This in turn has given our clients significant savings, averaging 4.91 bps, when removing liquidity from MTFs.”
He continued: “As an agency-only broker, our sole aim is to hunt out the best possible execution opportunities for our clients with the continual refinement of our sophisticated smart order router and commitment to connect to new liquidity venues. Next year is going to prove interesting, as we anticipate more new entrants and the quest for liquidity between the MTFs themselves is only set to heighten. Whatever the outcome, we are confident that our smart order router will continue to seek out the best possible executions for our clients.”

Table 1 – Instinet Europe price improvement when trading on MTFs [excluded]

About Instinet

Instinet Europe Limited is one of Europe’s largest agency brokerages and is a top 10 broker by market share ranking on the London Stock Exchange year to date ². The firm employs more than 40 sales and trading personnel in four European locations. Instinet Europe provides its clients with a comprehensive suite of trading services that includes agency sales trading, global portfolio trading, algorithmic trading, DMA and commission management.

Instinet is an electronic trading pioneer, having established the world’s first significant electronic trading venue in 1969, one of the first recognized U.S. ECNs in 1997 and the first pan-European MTF in 2007. Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, Instinet operates two distinct business lines: a global network of agency-only brokers that seek to help institutions lower overall trading costs and improve investment performance through the use of innovative electronic trading products, including smart-routing, algorithms, DMA, dark pools and EMS platforms, and also provide sales trading, commission management services and independent research; and the Chi-X® trading systems, which aim to improve the efficiency of capital markets globally by providing high-performance, low-cost alternative execution venues. Instinet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nomura Holdings, Inc. For more information, please visit www.instinet.com .

©2008 Instinet Europe Limited. All rights reserved. INSTINET is a registered trademark in the United States and in other countries throughout the world. Approved for distribution in Europe by Instinet Europe Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

1 Price improvement is defined as the difference between execution price and the best quoted price on the primary exchange at that time. Measurement is based on Instinet Europe Limited’s review of all IEL trade executions when removing liquidity from MTFs between 1 November 2007 and 31 October 2008, and does not represent an independent review of execution performance.

2 According to the London Stock Exchange Reporting Service.

CONTACT: Instinet

Mark Dowd, 212-310-5331
First Vice President, Global Corporate Communications &
Public Relations
mark.dowd@instinet.com
or
Streets Consulting Ltd. for Instinet Europe Limited
Julia Streets, + 44 20 7959 2235
julia.streets@streetsconsulting.com

URL: http://www.businesswire.com

LOAD-DATE: December 11, 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DISTRIBUTION: Business Editors

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

“Many firms who are not members of the TRAX community are unaware of their legal obligation to report exchange-traded derivatives under MiFID. We have been working closely with our clients to ensure they are compliant and to provide them with a seamless solution to this matter,” said Kevin Milne, Chief Executive of Xtrakter.

TRAX is the leading post-trade, pre-settlement, trade matching & regulatory confirmation system in use by the OTC market. TRAX has been operating successfully since 1989 and has over 200 hundred subscribers located globally. TRAX processes on average 1.5 million transactions daily.

TRAX is an Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) under MiFID and provides regulatory reporting to FSA (UK), AMF (France), AFM (Netherlands) and NBB (Belgium) on behalf of the TRAX community.
For more information about ETD and complex derivative reporting visit:

www.xtrakter.com/aiinovember.aspx

1. TRAX

TRAX is a leading post-trade, pre-settlement, trade matching & regulatory confirmation system for the OTC market. It is available to any financial institution active in the international capital market assisting financial institutions with their matching, reporting and regulatory requirements.
For more information about TRAX visit www.xtrakter.com/matching.aspx

2. Xtrakter

Xtrakter is a leading provider of operational risk management, trade matching, regulatory reporting and data services to the global capital market. It has an established track record in providing innovative, secure and reliable systems for the financial services sector.

Formerly known as ICMA Ltd, Xtrakter was established in 1985 as the market services division of the ICMA trade association and was one of the first providers of secure trade matching and regulatory reporting systems for the over the counter (OTC) market.

Xtrakter has pioneered the development of the first repurchase (repo) automated trade matching system.

CONTACT: Conor Coughlan, Product & Services Marketing Product Management, Xtrakter Tel: +44 (0)20 7510 2692 Tel: +44 (0)77 2669 4333 WWW: http://www.xtrakter.com/contactconor.aspx
((M2 Communications Ltd disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com)).

LOAD-DATE: December 4, 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newsletter

JOURNAL-CODE: M2P

Xtrakter, a utility acquired by Euroclear last month from the International Capital Market Association, has announced that its Trax trade matching and regulatory reporting system will facilitate the reporting of exchange-traded derivatives and other complex derivatives in accordance with the requirements of the European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) starting in the first quarter of next year.

The Committee of European Securities Regulators requires firms to regulatory report derivatives to competent authorities throughout Europe in accordance with MiFID. According to Xtrakter, by utilising Alternative Investment Identifier codes the Trax community can report exchange-traded and other complex derivatives to the UK’s Financial Services Authority.

‘Many firms that are not members of the Trax community are unaware of their legal obligation to report exchange-traded derivatives under MiFID,’ says Xtrakter chief executive Kevin Milne. ‘We have been working closely with our clients to ensure they are compliant and to provide them with a seamless solution to this matter.’

Trax is a post-trade, pre-settlement trade matching and regulatory confirmation system in use by the over the counter derivatives market since 1989. The system has more than 200 subscribers worldwide and processes an average of 1.5 million transactions daily.

Trax is an approved reporting mechanism under MiFID and provides regulatory reporting to the FSA in the UK, France’s AMF, AFM in the Netherlands and the Belgian National Bank, and is available to any financial institution active in the international capital market.

A provider of operational risk management, trade matching, regulatory reporting and data services to the global capital market, Xtrakter was established in 1985 as the market services division of the ICMA trade association and was one of the first providers of secure trade matching and regulatory reporting systems for the OTC market, as well as pioneering the development of the first repurchase automated trade matching system.

Last month international clearing house Euroclear signed an agreement with the ICMA to acquire Xtrakter for an undisclosed cash amount. Subject to regulatory approval, the firm will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Euroclear and a sister company to the group’s international and national central securities depositories as well as EMXCo, a provider of mutual fund order routing messages.

‘Under our new ownership, we will maintain our strategy of delivering ongoing improved client services across all our business lines,’ Milne said at the time. ‘Being part of Euroclear will enable us to drive our matching, reporting and information services products into new areas, helping our customers to reduce further their operational cost of trading.’

LOAD-DATE: December 23, 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newsletter

The team led by Amanda Bowe (pictured), head of the RDR, had the unenviable task of drawing together 888 responses to the original discussion paper and producing a report that would be if not welcomed with open arms by all corners of the marketplace at least accepted by most of it.

Meanwhile Jon Pain, the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) managing director of retail markets, entered the maelstrom in late July amid adviser fears that his banking background would cast a shadow over the progress made in April’s interim report.

Predictably enough, the adventurous proposals put forward in April have been weathered by reality, and plenty of murmurs of discontent were to be heard at the RDR conference last Tuesday.

But Pain and Bowe are anxious to emphasise that the review was never about making life easier for IFAs, banks, product providers or even the FSA, but to restore consumer trust in financial services.
‘We have no bias as to how the market shakes out, in terms of the number of customers who go towards the independent adviser or other parts of the marketplace,’ Pain said. ‘What we’re interested in is more consumers engaging with their financial needs across this marketplace as a whole, with a higher level of confidence.’

Capital punishment One of the loudest dissenting voices was that of Chris Cummings, director general of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers (Aifa). Cummings drew rapturous applause at the FSA’s conference at the Brewery in Chiswell Street, London, for telling the FSA that IFAs felt ‘ignored and trampled on’.

Cummings was particularly incensed over the controversial proposals to force IFAs to hold significantly more cash in reserve than is presently the case, and asked how firms were expected to raise capital when revenue was dwindling and banks were severing lines of credit.

‘Some of those comments were unfortunate,’ Pain said. ‘I think in fairness there is some misunderstanding it’s maybe not a real reflection of what’s in the feedback statement.

‘There’s no sudden huge deluge of capital required in this industry. I think those requirements are quite realistic, and it comes back to this whole point about consumer confidence.

‘Part of the capital question is about giving consumers confidence about the continuity of businesses serving their needs. If you don’t have that, you don’t have any consumer confidence at all.

‘For firms to have the resilience to stay in the marketplace for the long term particularly as we’re talking about a long-term investment market here is completely appropriate.’

Pain denied the proposals were designed to make the FSA’s job of regulating firms easier by encouraging consolidation and membership of networks.

The European question The interim report’s sales/advice split, and the FSA’s desire to end provider involvement in remuneration altogether, were inconsistent with the markets in financial instruments directive (Mifid). Was the FSA hamstrung by Europe?

‘Quite emphatically, we have achieved our aims with the RDR, and we are not hampered by the European legislation,’ Pain said. ‘That’s part of the equation, and it quite rightly points to some parts of the legal issues that we need to be aware of.’

‘When people are selling, they are usually making a recommendation,’ Bowe explained. ‘Legally, that means they’re advising. We don’t think it’s right that if a customer is getting advice, that it’s concealed in some way.

‘This is partly also underpinned by Mifid, but actually the point is we think it’s right and proper, because the protections that go with giving advice are very different.’

Pain added: ‘If you let firms off by saying they can do a sale and not call it advice, then all the questions of suitability and the requirement to know your customer go out the window. We wouldn’t be able to protect consumers. We think that would be fundamentally wrong.’

Not that tied and multi-tied advisers, relegated to ’sales’ in the interim report landscape, will be able to carry on as though nothing had happened. ‘The old business models of the world don’t just translate into this new world,’ Pain said.

One of the biggest hurdles will be for ’sales advisers’ to be able to demonstrate the cost of their advice as opposed to the cost of products. ‘It’s achievable, but it will be a big challenge,’ Bowe said.
The RDR is dead long live RDIP The RDR has been completed, and Bowe is preparing to hand over the reins of the ‘retail distribution implementation programme’ (RDIP) to current FSA head of retail policy Andrew Sykes. Is the hardest part still to come?

‘Yes,’ said Pain. ‘Because quite frankly, as brilliant a job as Amanda and the team have done, it’s what happens in the marketplace that really counts,’ he said. ‘And this is all about trying to make this marketplace work better for consumers. We wholeheartedly believe that.’

LOAD-DATE: December 3, 2008

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH