CEO Letter - January 2018

By: Nandini Sukumar, CEO, The WFE Jan 2018

Dear Colleagues

Welcome to your January 2018 issue of Focus. This month, we are pleased to welcome viewpoints from seven of our members, each offering their perspectives on the key themes and topics to look out for in the coming year. We are delighted to feature the following exchange and CCP executives:

  • Gilson Finkelsztain, CEO, B3
  • Ed Tilly, CEO & Chairman, Cboe Global Markets
  • Diana Chan, CEO, EuroCCP
  • Nicky Newton-King, CEO, JSE
  • Alina Aldambergen, CEO, Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE)
  • Chairman Jan-yau HSU, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE)
  • Ittai Ben-Zeev, CEO, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE)

Together they present a truly global view of what the next few months hold for the market infrastructure sector, covering the regulatory landscape, business priorities, and the changing nature of the social role of exchanges and CCPs. We invite you to enjoy their contributions.

In this issue, Adena Friedman, President & CEO, Nasdaq writes about the idea of adapting the best features of equities markets into more of our daily transactions - what Nasdaq calls the Markets Economy. She skilfully sets out the creation of an economy that empowers everyone to participate equally, and with the proper intentions.

We are delighted to welcome a contribution from Thailand Securities Institute (TSI), The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) about its financial literacy programme. During the WFE General Assembly & Annual Meeting in 2017 in Bangkok, delegates were given the opportunity to visit INVESTORY, the first investment discovery museum in Thailand established by SET. In this article, we hear more about how through investor education, Thai people can gain relevant knowledge from basic to advanced concepts, covering comprehensive financial planning and investment areas.

Murray Pozmanter, Managing Director and Head of Clearing Agency Services and Global Operations at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) sat down with Focus recently to discuss DTCC’s newest white paper 'Modernising the U.S. Equity Markets Post-Trade Infrastructure'. It puts forward two proposals to reduce the US settlement cycle further – settlement optimisation and accelerated settlement – which could potentially get clients to a settlement cycle of even less than T+1 without removing a calendar day, and while still maintaining the substantial benefits of centralised netting and risk management.

January has been a very busy month for the WFE Regulatory Affairs team who have produced two marketing-leading papers: firstly, a position paper summarising the WFE’s current views on FinTech and the regulatory environment surrounding it; and secondly, a set of best practice guidelines for market infrastructures designed to engender a staff culture of cyber security compliance. This work is part of the WFE’s role as an industry standard setter, and we are already working on standards and guidelines in other key regulatory areas for publication later this year.

We are looking forward to a number of WFE events in the 2018 calendar.

The first of these is the WFE SME Conference, with host, the Malta Stock Exchange (MSE), on Sunday 25 & Monday 26 February 2018. You can register for the event here, and read more about the conference here.

At the Malta meeting, in addition to other SME topics, the WFE will launch its forthcoming research on the challenges and opportunities around listing family-owned businesses which are a key component of all thriving equity markets. Family firms have unique characteristics that impact the way they take decisions, conduct their business, and relate to their stakeholders and other companies. The WFE’s research will highlight some of these attributes; outline how these impact on financing decisions (including use of public equity markets); and identify steps market operators can take to enhance the attractiveness of markets for these firms.

The conference will also include an in-person meeting of the WFE SME Working Group.

We look forward to welcoming members, affiliates and stakeholders to Malta next month.

We are also working on the 35th IOMA: The WFE’s Clearing & Derivatives Conference, with host OCC (Options Clearing Corporation). The meeting will take place in Chicago running from the evening of Wednesday 11 April through to Friday 13 April 2018. The WFE’s IOMA conference focuses on post-trade issues and brings together the leaders of the world’s futures & options markets with clearing houses. The conference website will open next month with full details about the event.

We hope you enjoy this bumper edition of Focus.

Nandini Sukumar
Chief Executive Officer
The WFE