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happened at TradeTech this year
with the chairman of the Autorité
des Marchés Financiers (AMF),
who made his views on periodic
auctions very clear to delegates.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it is
addressed in future. It’s only nat-
ural that with such a tremendous
change to the industry and market
structure that there is a period of
reflection where the industry looks
back at everything.
There’s also going to be a ‘look-
back’ from a regulatory perspective
around the implementation of
MiFID II, so we could see some-
thing then, but it’s a complex issue.
We take in quotes from SIs and
we have to analyse that behaviour
very closely, but if there is any
wrong-doing or any pre-matched
business in those SIs, then it
wouldn’t surprise me if regulators
take a firmer look. If the debate
|
around SIs and the interaction with
SIs has been relatively muted for
bank SIs, I’d say client opinion on
periodic auctions is tremendously
split. Some clients are questioning
whether firms have re-created a
BCN and if they are therefore going
to be under more scrutiny, while
others say it’s a liquidity event and
if the broker is happy, then they are
happy. For Instinet, if it’s a credible
venue with credible liquidity and
it fits our execution policy and the
needs of our clients, then we will
provide access to it.
HM: What has Instinet got planned
for the rest of the year?
RP: It’s going to be two-fold. Firstly
we are going to continue to help
other broker-dealers outsource
trading capabilities where they are
looking to do that, and secondly we
will continue our focus on liquidity
R I C H A R D
PA R S O N S ]
aggregation and the workflow side.
Innovation around the block trad-
ing space and innovation in terms
of the aggregation of all of the
different liquidity types, providing
our clients with one entry point
to various liquidity types. That
seems to be the key driver and key
message from our institutional
clients at the moment. It’s about
being able to navigate all of these
new venues in a way that ensures
minimum information leakage in
an agency environment, which for
us obviously plays a big part in that
process, and I think that’s the clear
direction that we are on. I don’t see
us deviating from that at any point
in the short-term. We will continue
to build our data set and make
informed trading decisions for our
clients so that at the end of the
day, Instinet can deliver execution
performance.
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