CEO Letter - October 2018

By: Nandini Sukumar, CEO, The WFE Oct 2018

Dear Colleagues

Welcome to the October issue of Focus, a particularly heavyweight edition.

We look back with fond memories to the 58th WFE General Assembly & Annual Meeting (GA&AM), which took place in Athens from 2-4 October.  We would like to thank our gracious hosts, the Athens Stock Exchange, for an outstanding event.  With more than 360 delegates this year, our Annual Meeting was the largest in WFE history, matched only by the sheer quality of our formidable roster of speakers, moderators and panellists.

Our Executive Interview of the month features, of course, our warm GA&AM host, Socrates Lazaridis, CEO of the Athens Stock Exchange Group (ATHEX).  He talks to us about the importance of the 58th GA&AM to the global market infrastructure industry, and the role of ATHEX in the ongoing renewal of Greek markets.

At the WFE Annual Meeting, Arunma Oteh, Treasurer, World Bank took part in a fireside chat with me where she spoke about how “exchanges can contribute to boosting shared prosperity around the world by catalysing financial inclusion and economic participation.” Following that appearance, we are delighted to include a special feature on Arunma in the magazine this month.

Steven Maijoor, Chair, European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) opened the WFE Annual Meeting in Athens with a key note speech focusing on the state of implementation of MIFID II and preparing for Brexit.

We are pleased to welcome another contributor from the 58th GA&AM - William Coen, Secretary General, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision - who sat down for a fireside chat with Edward Tilly, Chairman & CEO of Cboe Global Markets, and discussed the importance of global standards.  Here, William writes about the Committee's programme, and looks ahead to the future now the reform agenda has been finalised.

Another speaker at the 58th GA&AM was Samara Cohen, Head of iShares Global Markets, BlackRock. Samara talked to us about the evolution of the ETF market, tracing trading and markets back through time to the use of clay tokens in 3500 BC. Samara presents the viewpoint from the buy-side.

Jan Boomaars, CEO, Optiver, who was a speaker on the 'renewal, rebuilding and rebirth of economies' panel in Athens, writes about the dramatic increase of systematic internalisation and strict capital requirements that are creating an environment that threatens efficient markets in Europe.

At the 58th General Assembly in Athens, the WFE was delighted to welcome six new members taking the total number of full members to 70, an historic high. The WFE represents more than 200 market infrastructure providers and, as the global voice for exchanges and CCPs, has a mandate to forge consensus on the market structure policy issues that matter, in addition to driving, enabling and fostering market development around the world. We attribute our strong pipeline of new member requests to the work we are doing for, and on behalf of, our members and look forward to welcoming them in future editions of Focus. Watch this space.

Also at the General Assembly, we were pleased to elect seven Directors of the Board, particularly the new WFE Chairman, Dr Urs Rüegsegger, Chairman of the SIX Swiss Exchange. On behalf of the WFE and its members, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Wu Qing for his distinguished service as WFE Chairman over the past year, and wish him continued success as Vice Mayor of Shanghai.

India’s multi-asset exchange and largest stock exchange National Stock Exchange of India limited (NSE) is celebrating its silver jubilee this year, and we hear about the key events that have taken place to mark this special milestone.

In addition to the GA&AM, the WFE has had a very busy month.  

The WFE took a very active role in the recent UNCTAD World Investment Forum in Geneva, where I spoke at the event's Grand Opening, moderated the SSE Global Dialogue, and also participated in the WFE/UNCTAD panel on sustainability, commodities and derivatives.

This month saw the third annual ‘Women Leaders in Financial Infrastructure’ event take place in Amsterdam, where female leaders came together to share their experiences with aspiring future leaders of the industry.  It was a privilege to share the platform with such inspiring women leaders.

The WFE Research Team has published a set of five WFE Sustainability Principles that constitute a formal declaration by the WFE and its membership to take on a leadership role in promoting the sustainable finance agenda. In addition, the team published a report (together with a supplementary dataset) entitled 'An overview of WFE SME markets', examining the current status of 33 SME markets across 29 WFE member exchanges.

In addition, the WFE Research Team has published its latest dashboard, market statistics, and monthly insights piece, which focuses on a Q3 Market Update.

This month the WFE Regulatory Affairs Team published its response to the BoE-FCA-PRA Discussion Paper on Operational Resilience; and also responded to the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN) Consultation Document.  You can read both responses in the magazine this month.

We are looking ahead to a full programme of events in 2019, starting with the January 2019 Working Committee; more details to follow in due course.  We are also planning our annual IOMA: WFE’s Clearing & Derivatives Conference 2019, which will take place 2-4 April in Mumbai; and our bi-annual Technology Conference, which next year will be held 30 June-2 July in Sweden. Please look out for more information.

Thank you.

Nandini Sukumar
Chief Executive Officer
The WFE