Commenting on the FCA’s plans to develop a consolidated tape for fixed income, David Everson, Head of Trading, Fixed Income EMEA at Liquidnet, said:
“It makes sense that the UK would prioritise a Fixed Income consolidated tape first as the asset class has traditionally been much more opaque than, for example, equities. It will be interesting to see how this progresses.
“The objective of having a regulatory framework in place by 2024 may be a little optimistic. These things tend to take much longer than expected to execute. The market will undoubtedly welcome the additional transparency that a consolidated tape may bring, particularly if it helps to drive down the cost to trade which, it could be argued, is increasing.
“However, a Fixed Income consolidated tape will unlikely solve all the pain points overnight. The US has had TRACE for some time, yet suffers from similar obstacles around price transparency.
“The prospect of both an EU and a UK consolidated tape will be extremely interesting to data hungry systematic/algo type houses. Real time trade prints and better pre/post trade data will also very likely accelerate further the electronification of Fixed Income markets.”
