The OMX Nordic Exchange has vowed to slash trade reporting fees in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki early next year, and to extend the system across European markets with the advent of the Markets in Financial Services Directive (MiFID) in November 2007.
The Exchange says fees for trade reporting will be harmonised and reduced by approximately 50%.
Based on trading revenues during the last 12 months until September 2006, the cuts would have cost OMX Skr50 million in annual revenues.
Jukka Ruuska, president OMX Nordic Exchange, says the fee reduction is a first step in introducing products for trade reporting under MiFID.
"Next step for OMX trade reporting offering is to extend it to securities from all over the European Union and further simplify our reporting facility”, he says.
The trade reporting arena is set to be a key battleground for competing providers in the post-MiFID trading landscape. Under the new rules European investment banks will no longer be required to report all trades through regulated exchanges and will instead be able to report to any registered entity.
A group of nine leading European investment banks have already laid out plans to develop their own trade reporting system as an alternative to costly exchange-based platforms.