Verena Ross, Executive Director ESMA, Delivers Keynote Speech At AFME European Market Liquidity Conference - Liquidity And New Financial Market Regulation

Excerpt

“Five years ago today the regulatory community around the world was preparing what would later become the G20 leaders’ statement following the Pittsburgh Summit. It was the start of a regulatory and legislative overhaul and, one of the biggest globally coordinated financial sector reform ever.
Since then the EU has discussed and made amendments to almost all of its financial services legislation, in the securities markets area for example: the introduction of direct supervision of credit rating agencies by ESMA, the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the Alternative Investment Funds Directive (AIFMD), the Transparency Directive, the Market Abuse Directive (MAD), MIFID etc.
Today the results of the new legislation are becoming more and more tangible for financial markets. In that respect, 2014 will become a crucial year, especially for anything to do with financial markets infrastructures. As you know the European Parliament and Council have reached an agreement on the MiFID II proposals at the beginning of January 2014 and derivatives reporting to trade repositories started just under two weeks ago.
During today’s talk I will elaborate on the work ahead of us on MiFID II, on defining liquidity within financial markets for MiFID II and on the implementation of EMIR.”