[00:00:00] Speaker A: This week in the parish of Bourses and Market Structure. Is CMU dead? $17 billion bounty for CFTC, SEBI sued for IPO and there's a new DB1 chairman. Well, in New York we say a fond farewell to Art Cash. My name is Patrick L. Young. Welcome to the Bourse Business Weekly Digest. It's the Exchange Invest weekly podcast, episode 270.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in Market Structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings from the past seven days can be found in Exchange Invests Daily subscriber Newsletter. Unique guide to the Boss business sent daily to your inbox. More
[email protected] over in Bit Carnage well, are there grim ghosts ahead? I have my concerns about the often wrong Brussels bugle branded more broadly as the Financial Times. But on crypto, this story had been rather spot on. The grim Ghost of Crypto Future outlines a series of points where there is concern. If the crypto bros get their ways and a vastly deregulated environment breaks out under Trump, or any major government for that matter, things might look tricky. At the same time, the entire crypto world is convinced Paul Atkins becoming SEC chairman is a watershed moment for crypto. Well, not so fast. Yes, Paul is a true deregulatory advocate who has been very cynical of a lot of SEC issues and he's been involved in crypto advocacy, but then again, he was, until his nomination, running a lobbying firm. The issue for me boils down to two things. First up, earlier this week, the spin from Team Trump was apparently the CFTC would take a lot more responsibility for crypto over the sec. The second key concern must surely be those of us with perspective that goes back a whole term in US electoral cycles. And we all recall that the crypto bros were ecstatic that somebody who'd been lecturing on crypto at MIT would become SEC chairman. Remind me, how did that work out over in the legacy world of exchanges we led this week with the story Is CMU dead? Ultimately, the dogma of EU commissions is such that they can try to work something for maybe one to two, perhaps three commission periods, but rarely longer. Intriguingly, for all the fat talk of a CMU for over a decade, it's no longer a priority. Or is it? I appreciate the died in the world. Europhiles won't like this, but and ironic that FAISE, the Federation of European Securities Exchanges, was celebrating 50 years of good work this week. It seems to me the old notion of capital markets union is dead on arrival. That's hardly surprising as the EC was utterly incapable of doing anything about it for at least a couple of Commission terms. And indeed the last commissioner responsible for CMU was the breathtakingly incapable Mairead McGuinness. So here's the weird bit. There's a page on the bloated EU website, or rather the EC website to be precise, the European Commission called Finance European Commission, which refers to cmu. But the page relating to the new Commissioner, Maria Luiz Albuquerque from Portugal, shows her primary priority as, and I quote, developing a European savings and investment unit, including banking and capital markets to help leverage the enormous wealth of private savings in support of the EU's wider objectives under secondary priority has given us designing savings and investment products at EU level to tackle the fragmentation of capital markets. In other words, CMU is having a make, but it's also being modified from its original purpose. Capital markets are now becoming an also ran as opposed to a primary priority and once again the banks are getting center stage. This is as unsurprising as it is a cause for deep concern that the EU is actually is unwilling to actually embrace regenerative capitalism. The EU once again believes as scant evidence to prove their case that they can with Soviet inelegance, central plan, prosperity of the European Union. It doesn't take an Einstein to ponder are you really sure you want to repeat the same mistakes in the hope suddenly results might differ again? Compare and contrast with the likely deregulatory agenda of the Paul Atkins SEC chairmanship.
Over in India, investors are demanding SEBI's green light for the NSE IPO in the Delhi High Court. Frustrated investors have moved a motion at the High Court in Delhi seeking to ensure SEBI will finally acquiesce to an IPO of nse. The story has been running between background and foreground for over a generation. It may yet result in an ipo, but SEBI continues to play an impressive rearguard action. It's difficult not to perceive the latest moves to forcibly spin out clearing platform csds as a move de facto regulatory bad faith aimed at undermining investor value in nse.
No results this week, no major new markets either, and not even a big deal. However, all the news was of course in exchange invest throughout the course of this week as we lead up to the festive period. And don't for forget as well if you'd like some added reading, something to give somebody for their Christmas stockings. It's a virtual Christmas stocking filler in fact, Exchange Invest is proud to have launched a special edition inspired by my visit to ring the closing bell at the New York stock exchange on July 5, 2024. My original bestseller, Capital Market Revolution was the first breakthrough book in fintech, a decade before that word held common currency. There are over 10,000 new words of additional pith, placing the past quarter century in perspective alongside the original text which has provoked remarkably successful through the years. Capital Market Revolution 25th Anniversary Edition is published by Exchange Invest and is not available as an ebook via Amazon Kindle at a ludicrously Reasonable price of $9.99 a quarter the price of the original shorter print book a quarter century ago.
If you fancy some financial insights with moving pictures, don't forget to check out our live streams Tuesday 05:00 London time 12 midday New York time the IPO Video Live Show Catch the back episodes on LinkedIn and YouTube via IPO vid. We've just wrapped the season, ladies and gentlemen, with highlights part two from IPO Vid 164. That's highlights of the year in Revolution. And our next show is going to be January 7th, 2025 IPO Vid 165 with Joe Sequilla. Don't forget you can catch all the back issues and episodes online via YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn by simply searching IPO Vid.
And of course also all the archives of Exchange Investor Online as we build up towards our year end highlights editions which will take place over the festive season. Sign up for an Exchange Invest subscription
[email protected] the Weekend Edition, Macroeconomics and Politics and much, much more. Interesting reading is absolutely free. The Monday to Friday Nitty Gritty of the bourse business. That's $499 per user year and cheap at half the price if you work in market structure. Our Book of the Week this week is the Everything Blueprint, the Microchip Design that Changed the World by James Ashton, telling the story of ARM from humble beginnings to its pivotal role in the MO phone revolution. James Ashton was our guest on IPO Vid 157, the quoted company's agenda.
Meanwhile, in Product news. Well, very interesting and exciting times at bme. They've expanded their multicurrency swaps offering to provide an attractive alternative for interest rate swap clearing in the European Union. BME sensibly seeking to take advantage of the EC's naked protectionism of the CCP clearing in Euro currency. At the same time, ICE have expanded their vast product portfolio in energy with Japanese electricity futures. Back at bme, they've launched Spaynet Mid, a new pool of non displayed liquidity to make trading in Spanish equities more attractive in recent weeks. DB1 rejoined the block trading fray over a decade after their weekly managed flirtation with liquidnet, while Vienna announced moves to take advantage of the same Zetra functionality as reported in EI3136 just days ago.
Now BME is adding to the European block trading phenomenon. In technology news, a very interesting study from Nasdaq this week shows firms turning to AI and data scientists to enhance regulatory compliance. Not surprise, but I think it definitely shows an intriguing way that you can offer more tech power in order to manage to reduce headcount and nonetheless deliver better markets. Speaking of delivering better markets in regulation, the CFTC released their 2024 fiscal year enforcement results $17.1 billion in fines, a handy number in the wake of the SEC announcing, also a record for the year, 8.2 billion. Just recently at least, the discredited CFTC Chairman Banham steps down with a handy contribution to the spendthrift failed Biden era, albeit a lot of it comes from Alameda ftx where it has to be said, sadly, Benham truly discredited himself by being anything but a regulatory leader. Final piece of regulatory news this week SEBI in India are proposing a 15 minute call auction session to determine closing prices. Very interesting.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Exchange Invest Weekly. We welcome your feedback. You can contact me directly
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[00:09:53] Speaker A: We made mention of it earlier on President Trump nominating Paul Atkins as SEC Chair. The media trumpeting has all been about crypto and Paul Atkins apparent advocacy for it. Albeit I am not sure this bromance will follow though, as the cryptokitties desire, or at least fast. Not for the crypto cryptokitties. There's a lot of work to be done in the SEC firmament at the moment. It could be that crypto comes late to the picture for deregulation.
One fabulous piece of news also from the Trump administration. Kelly Loeffler, the founder CEO of Bakkt, formerly a key member of the Intercontinental Exchange Team, has been named as the boss of the sba, the Small Business Administration office of the US Government. Fabulous news altogether. I wish Kelly all the best with what is a vitally important brief in any nation, particularly a fundamentally entrepreneurial one like the usa.
Sad to report the passing of Art Cash in the New York Stock Exchange fixture for many decades at the age of 83. He was a much quoted character at the heart of the Nice floor for decades who eschewed digital technology across a broad range of activities, including anything pertinent to securities trading. RIP Nicey Floor legend Art Cashin, Deutsche Bose They've appointed some new executive board members and a new chairman. Gosh, for a moment it looked so exciting. A woman to chair DB1. Hooray for diversity. Then we read she used to work for McKinsey. So on the binary scale, take 1 for gene diversity, 0 for thought diversity. Another open goal missed by the tragically linear DB1 upper blob. In other news, DB1 appointed Christian Croman, the Simcorp CEO when it was acquired by DB1, and Jens Schulte as the new executive board members. The latter, Jens Schrulte, is joining as CFO only months after taking up the same role with Tyson Krupp.
In vendor staffing news, we hear the chief commercial officer of Expri, Ulf Axman, has left the firm after a year. It's unclear what has happened, but clearly Ulf's vast experience and enormous Rolodex his position as an industry eminent Greece cannot be underestimated will likely attract employers in the near future. Rumors abound of other departures at the Israeli vendor Expri, whose reference client Abax successfully went live on the platform earlier this year.
Jumping over to Big World Here's a fun fact about the Trump legacy from his first term when he came into office as President of the United states of America. Number 45 in 27 2018, over 21% of US imports came from China. By 2023, with the Joe Brezhnev administration maintaining previous Trump policies, that number was down to 14%, a drop of no less than 1/3. And on that mysterious and magnificent note, thank you for listening to this EI Weekly Podcast 275. Join us daily via exchange invest.com or if you have a new exchange you'd like built, get in touch. My name is Patrick L. Young and I wish you a great week in life and markets.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: This show relates to the business of bourses. It is not to be construed as investment advice nor are we making any investment recommendations.
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