European stock exchanges are promising to eliminate fees on 15-minute delayed data by the end of the year as they step up their campaign against the introduction of a mandatory consolidated tape for EU market data.
Representing the views of regulated market venues, the Federation of European Stock Exchanges says the introduction of a consolidated tape would neither improve transparency nor lower costs, but would instead "pose serious threats to the competitive framework that MiFID has enabled".
The exchanges are wary of giving up control of a valuable source of revenue at a time when their income and market share is being squeezed by a host of new competitors.
The Committee of European Securities Regulators is currently gauging opinion on the need for a new central source of European trade data as part of its review of the post-MiFID framework. Earlier this week, French regulators came down firmly in support of the mandatory introduction of a consolidated tape system in Europe.
In its statement, the FESE promised to eliminate fees on 15-minute delayed data, support for trade identifiers and to make post-trade data available separately from pre‐trade information "at a reasonable cost".
The exchange lobby group also warned of the "unpredictable consequences" for the structure of European markets under a consolidated tape. "Gaming would likely become a fixture of the market and, instead of venues competing on the basis of their execution quality; they would compete in terms of their gaming," says the FESE. "This is not a good outcome for Europe."
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