Trade Reporting; all at sea

You would have though that trade reporting would be a simple thing with the regulatory organisation specifying what they wanted reported, by what medium, by whom and when but this is all too simplistic for today's markets. A discussion with one of the UK's top firm's compliance officers this week opened my eyes to the sheer lunacy of regulatory reporting in the 21st Century.

I do have some experience of electronic trade reporting during the eighties and early nineties, when the London Stock Exchange was the depository of my firms trade reports and where they were then passed on to the end regulator the SAF who later became the FSA. At least with this arrangement the reporting rules were relatively obvious if not totally clear when two sell side firms were dealing directly with each other. The LSE had reporting rules covering each type of transaction and if there was a dispute it was reasonably agreed and organised. What of today? Read more