CEO Letter - November 2016

By: The WFE Team Nov 2016

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the November issue of Focus. We have received great feedback on the new look and feel, so thank you; we hope you continue to enjoy the publication in its new format.

Thanks to all our members, affiliates, key stakeholders and media who attended the 56th WFE General Assembly & Annual Meeting (GA&AM) in Cartagena, Colombia, at the beginning of the month. The WFE would also like to particularly thank Juan Pablo Cordoba and his team at BVC for the warm welcome and superb hospitality over the three-day event. The incredibly high calibre of the key note speeches and panel sessions was matched by the spectacular setting of the city of Cartagena, and together created a recipe for a truly unforgettable WFE conference. We look forward to the 57th event in Bangkok next year, from 6-8 September 2017, hosted by the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

We are also in full planning mode in advance of the WFE Working Committee in Frankfurt, on 23 & 24 January 2017. The meeting, which will be hosted by Deutsche Boerse, will drive the WFE’s busy 2017 workplan.

In this issue of Focus, we explore further some of the highlights of the GA&AM for those of you who weren’t able to join us in person. Arunma Oteh, Treasurer of the World Bank opened the conference with an inspirational speech about how the World Bank and exchanges together can partner to promote growth and tackle global fragility; we’re delighted to reproduce that speech in this issue.

Raymond Kahn, FinTech advisor, Eric Noll, President & CEO, Convergex and Peter Lenardos, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets, review the key themes to emerge out of the panel sessions they took part in – Distributed Ledger Technology, Fixed Income and Consolidation respectively. We also feature Bente Landsnes, President & CEO, Oslo Børs, where she sets out her hopes for the future post-Brexit, following her participation in the Brexit-themed panel session in Colombia.

We’re pleased to have an interview with José Antonio Martínez, CEO of Bolsa de Santiago on the work the exchange is doing on internationalising the Chilean capital market. Mike Bodson, President & CEO, DTCC writes on the importance of collaboration in the fight against cyber threats, which is very timely given the WFE principles around cyber resilience that we issued in Q3 of this year. Sonia Consiglio Favaretto, Chair of the Corporate Sustainability Index Committee from BM&FBOVESPA takes us through its updated sustainability guide.

Gonzalo Gómez-Retuerto, General Manager, BME Group gives his perspective on how its Alternative Fixed Income Market (MARF), is fast becoming one of the most effective instruments for diversifying sources of funding, particularly for SMEs. And we hear from Hauke Stars, Executive Board Member of Deutsche Boerse Group on how stock exchanges can contribute to closing financing gaps in an ever-changing market environment.

Finally, the WFE research team looks at some of the trends behind the growth in commodity derivatives volumes this year.

We look forward to seeing many of you in Frankfurt in January.