The European Securities and Markets Authority has set out a series of tough new proposals for how credit rating agencies should be regulated. The proposals have reignited debate over the agencies, which have been controversial for their alleged role in the financial crisis.
Regulators in the US and Europe are stepping up investigations into dark pool activity, market abuse and manipulation of financial benchmarks following a spate of damaging incidents in recent months. Tougher regulatory oversight could have a significant impact on all three areas, according to a new report by financial services technology provider SunGard.
Western Union has expanded its account-to-account money transfer service to cover Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Europe now represents 10% of total Renminbi payments in value worldwide and is leading adoption beyond Asian countries, with four European countries in the top 10, excluding China and Hong Kong, according to Swift. Overall, the RMB strengthened its position as the seventh most used global payments currency and accounted for 1.57% of global payments.
Deutsche Bank has poached Scott Marcar, previously at RBS, to head up its IT infrastructure as the bank prepares to ramp up competition against its rivals.
Spanish bank BBVA has named the 20 finalists for the European leg of its financial services startup challenge, BBVA Open Talent, which will feed into the Next Bank Europe conference in Barcelona next month.
New European rules that require banks, brokers and clients to report their daily market positions and collateral values to trade repositories came into effect yesterday. But European regulator ESMA made no clarification about models, leaving the question of how to report up to the market. That could cause problems, market participants have warned.
The reason Europe calls it a regulatory ‘hearing’ is that it is an opportunity to hear views from both regulators and the market. Of course, that’s just part of the experience as many other senses are triggered when 400 people are locked in a basement for 2 days, deprived of connectivity, food and caffeine …
Regulators in Europe and the US are struggling to get to grips with trades that appear to be travelling back in time. Led by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, new efforts are underway to synchronise time, with the help of atomic clocks.
Spanish start-up support organisation Finnovista is hosting a ‘hackathon’ in Barcelona next month which it says will bring together programmers, designers and business people to develop new software for retail banking, capital markets, payments and big data.
Italian financial infrastructure company SIA has inked a deal with mobile commerce provider Swish Payments to support mobile payments in Africa and Europe. The two firms claim the deal will help to bring more efficient forms of payment to both regions.
Nordic financial services group Nordea has gone live in Frankfurt and London with a web-based trade finance solution, which it says will help to strengthen its international trade finance business.
A European financial transaction tax on equities and derivatives trades could be damaging for European liquidity levels and the City of London, but it also looks set to impose serious operational challenges for banks, brokers and their buy-side clients following the failure of a UK appeal to the European Court of Justice earlier this year.
Commissioner Scott O’Malia of the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission has called for continuing international co-operation on market surveillance and warned that current oversight mechanisms are flawed in terms of the data they collect and the way that they analyse it.
It is often said that market data in Europe is too expensive, but it would be unfair to blame that solely on the exchanges, according to Christiane Baumgarten, vice president, market data and services at Deutsche Börse (right). With the consolidated tape mandated by MiFID II due by 2016, market data is at the centre of the European Commission’s plans for a better trading environment in Europe.
MiFID II could cause serious problems for banks, brokers and other market participants in the run up to the January 2017 implementation, according to executives attending a meeting chaired by the European Securities Markets Authority in Paris earlier this week.
Trading technology specialist Cinnober has big plans for BOAT, the trade reporting service it acquired from Markit on 1 July – including new asset classes, a new focus on banks and brokers, and a renewed push at data quality.
The EU has set a date for the introduction of MiFID II, the long-awaited legislation from the European Commission which was recently approved by the European Parliament. The decision follows years of consultation and negotiation, but serious reservations remain about how transparency will be applied to non-equity markets.
Shortening settlement cycles and increased regulatory oversight are pushing financial institutions to reform their post-trade processes. That can only be a good thing, according to a new whitepaper from trading technology specialist Fidessa.
Italy’s Banca Popolare di Bari has chosen ATM manufacturer NCR to help it revitalise its branch network with a new set of systems that it says will help to cut queues and better connect with customers.
The European Securities and Markets Authority has disputed claims that it should be doing more to help financial institutions connect with trade repositories, following industry complaints that the regulator has not allowed enough time, has issued key specifications at the last minute, and is now scaling back its involvement with the job unfinished.
Despite promises of change heralded by the European Commission’s upcoming MiFID II, the cost of market data in Europe is still far too high and transparency remains a serious problem, according to senior financial industry executives. Yet the arrival of the Market Model Typology standard earlier this year may provide a catalyst for change.
A new generation of trading venues is competing their way into the European securities markets with plans to make trading more efficient. But will they bring benefit to banks and investors?
As the European Parliament adopted MiFID II/MiFIR on 15 April, the financial services industry was left wondering what exactly the new transparency regime is going to mean. Despite a curiously low EC estimate of compliance costs, at between €512 and €732 million, it is clear that MiFID II will have a large impact on the tens of thousands of firms and counterparties that will now fall under its scope.
Switzerland’s SIX Group is planning to set up a central trade repository or derivatives transactions together with a group of Swiss banks, in a move the company says will increase transparency and traceability of derivatives transactions. The project is based on the Swiss Financial Market infrastructure Act, a new piece of federal legislation which seeks […]
The European Union and the larger international policy community have given substantial attention to anti-money laundering regimes this year, cueing both financial institutions and regulators to begin the race to implement and enforce respectively, writes Aamir Khan, general counsel and head of London office at Clutch Group.
Dutch bank ING has installed an enterprise data sharing solution for its fixed income traders in Amsterdam , which the bank’s head of fixed income trading likened to a “whiteboard in the sky”.
The Athens Stock Exchange has chosen a new surveillance system that it says will help it cope with new European financial regulations, including MiFID II and EMIR.
The European Securities and Markets Authority has launched a consultation on the implementation of MiFID II, the long-awaited legislation from the European Commission which was recently approved by the European Parliament. The consultation seeks to translate the principles agreed in the draft text into more technical standards which will be directly implemented across the 28 member countries of the EU.
Swedish regional bank Swedbank is planning to roll out new ATM applications for 206 branches across the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The company will also upgrade more than 150 of its ATMs as part of a new multi-channel banking strategy.
Despite last month’s European Parliament vote, MiFID II will continue to be dogged by contentious issues and political infighting between member states ahead of the European elections on 22 May, senior financial industry observers have told Banking Technology.
Swift’s Innotribe Startup Challenge has named the five European finalists for its annual competition, which seeks to find the best new companies in financial services and bring them to compete in the final at Sibos Boston in October.
The introduction of a financial transaction tax could mean London losing a swathe of banking business to financial centres with a lighter regulatory regime, such as Hong Kong or Singapore not to mention the logistical and technical challenges for banks.
The purpose of the European Central Bank’s T2S project is ill-defined and taking so long to deliver that it is being pushed aside by other projects according to speakers at the Swift Business Forum in London.
Nearly three months after the European Commission’s 12 February deadline for trade reporting, market participants are still not ready to report their derivative trades and serious problems remain with understanding the rules.
The European Parliament has approved MiFID II, bringing to a close the political debate over the future of Europe’s trading infrastructure and ushering in a period of focus on finer technical details. The final vote will reflect a much more sensible approach than many had feared, according to Anne Plested, head of regulation change at trading technology specialist Fidessa.
Swift’s Innotribe innovation spin-out has named the European semi-finalists for its 2014 Startup Challenge, which seeks to find the most innovative start-up companies in financial services.
The European Commission’s MiFID II legislation has produced a disappointing outcome for those hoping for a consolidated tape of post-trade data, while exchanges continue to bear the brunt of participants’ anger over the price of market data.
New EU regulations on market making and dark pools could be damaging investor choice and forcing participants to make decisions that are not in their best interests.
When the requirement brought about by the German high frequency trading act to tag algorithms comes into force this month, market participants may well feel hamstrung by the complexity of the regime – and some might wonder whether this requirement goes one step too far …
