In response to the UK FCA’s consultation on supporting equity market transparency and considering market structure developments the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) has rejected the FCA’s view that the growth of bilateral trading is not something to be concerned with.
The WFE asks the FCA to question whether the current market structure framework creates the right incentives for different execution mechanisms to perform their intended functions, preserves robust price formation, and ensures that mechanisms competing for the same order flow do so on a level playing field.
The WFE also welcomes the FCA’s suggestion that “equity exposure tokens” or mimicked tokenised equities should be subject to reporting requirements where they merely replicate equity exposure.
Finally, the WFE supports the publication of an outage playbook, provided that it remains sufficiently flexible and does not become a prescriptive checklist of actions that must be followed irrespective of the circumstances.