Ludwik Sobolewski, CEO and President of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (‘WSE’), yesterday participated in a panel discussion at The Eurofi Financial Forum 2010 in Brussels. The panel, ‘EU Securities Infrastructures in a Global Context’, was moderated by Jeremy Grant of the Financial Times.
Mr Sobolewski commented that:
“Poland is CEE’s largest economy and has a strong and established capital markets infrastructure with WSE at its centre. With a thriving domestic institutional investor base, a broad pool of retail investors with increasing interest in capital markets and a strong and growing foreign investor base, WSE is already CEE’s preeminent stock exchange and one of the largest derivatives exchanges in Europe.
“We have a close and productive relationship with Poland’s central clearing and settlement house, the KDPW, in which we hold a 33.3% stake. We have already introduced short-selling and launched Clearpool to act as a backstop guarantor for market participants, and we are working on omnibus securities accounts, to allow foreign investors to hold Polish securities on behalf of their customers. We are also now working together to deliver full CCP functionality at the KDPW.
“Such cooperation is a key driver of the continued evolution of Poland’s capital markets infrastructure and is, we believe, a good model for other emerging markets to follow.”
Ludwik Sobolewski also commented on MiFID and fragmentation of the securities market in Europe:
“MiFID allowed for the appearance of MTFs and the growth of OTC trading. MTFs should be subject to the same rules and responsibilities as the traditional stock exchanges. In Europe, we have been too liberal when attempting to innovate trading in securities. When it comes to building liquidity and mitigating investment risk, a limited number of well regulated exchanges, entrusted with a broad mission would not be a bad thing."
