Sharon Bowles MEP supports Committee position on EU financial market reforms

Sharon Bowles MEP has given her support to the reports on MiFID and MiFIR* being voted on today in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON), saying while they may not be perfect yet, it is a good step forward in the cleaning up of financial trading and a boost for investor protection.

Bowles, who has chaired ECON since 2009, and was this week given the MEP award for that Committee, said: "I am pleased that my amendments on hard disclosure and remuneration have made it into the EP text, as it is vital that investors know exactly where their money is going, and they feel confident that they are being sold the right investment for them, not just what benefits the broker or bank. I thank my fellow Liberal MEP Olle Schmidt for all his hard work on this report".

Sharon Bowles, who represents the South East of England in the European Parliament, also pushed for work to be carried out on the standardisation of identifiers and messaging so as to ultimately enable real time transaction mapping: "We have this technology at our disposal: we should be using it to capture data instantly to advance supervisory oversight and analysis."

An important debate in the Parliament was how to regulate the trading of commodity derivatives which prompted a widespread campaign across Europe. Ms Bowles believes that the compromise reached should be well received: "We are clamping down on so-called "food speculation", by imposing hard limits on how many contracts or positions one market participant can hold at a time, which will promote stable conditions and prevent market abuse. In addition, rigorous checks by national and European authorities will be enforced on those who have a real interest in the physical commodity and carry out genuine hedging."

However, Ms Bowles was disappointed with the outcome of the articles in the Regulation on open access to clearing houses for trading venues, and benchmark licensing: "I find the deletion of Article 30 which calls for non-discriminatory access to licences for benchmark indices frankly bizarre in this time of more transparency and consumer choice. It is possible to balance the interests of index owners and public here, which I will continue to press for."

"If trading venues had open access to CCPs for all financial instruments, and vice versa, there would be greater competition leading to more choice and lower fees for the investor. There are systemic risk matters to consider as well as competition."

ENDS

* Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation

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