HFT: On the brink of definitive new controls?

Thanks to technological hiccup after technological hiccup, High Frequency Trading (HFT) remains a permanent fixture in the financial press. With each blip, regulators and politicians promise to regulate HFT, but how they are going to put effective controls in place is still an open question. Despite the noise, the issues with HFT remain the same.…

Systemically Important Financial Institutions

SIFI assessment criteria are becoming increasingly stratified and are coming to financial institutions near you. Higher capital surcharges, ring fencing, ‘unplugging’ and new living will reports are all parts of a solution to combat ‘too big to fail.’ Some economists contend that the banks that are too-big-to-fail enjoy a lower cost of capital because they…

Record keeping: The EU raises the global bar

Most of what the MEPs voted into law in July required ESMA to define exactly what they meant in their record keeping demands legislated through EMIR. Unfortunately, a few clauses slipped through the net in the drafting process… One of these was regarding record keeping which, according to experts, means that, as of 16 August,…