Clearstream's Exchange of Ideas on “A Blueprint for a Capital Markets Union” a success
On Wednesday 27 May 2015, top EU regulators and policymakers gathered in the City of London for Clearstream’s third and acclaimed Exchange of Ideas - a thought-leadership series of conferences on key issues and challenges facing the financial services sector. The topic of this third Exchange of Ideas event was “Blueprint for a Capital Markets Union (CMU)”.
Clearstream CEO Jeffrey Tessler gave the welcome address, setting out the company’s perspective on EU plans for a CMU, welcoming the EU’s market-led approach to the construction of CMU and urging a streamlining and consolidation of current EU financial services legislation.
Once again, the event attracted top keynote speakers, notably ESMA Chairman Steven Maijoor, FCA Director Markets and International Policy David Lawton as well as post-trade expert Professor Alberto Giovannini – well known for having identified and examined the barriers to a single European market, dubbed the “Giovannini Barriers”. Further panel speakers included the European Commission’s CMU point man Niall Bohan, JP Morgan’s Head of Global Market Infrastructures Diana Dijmarescu and Philippe de Backer MEP, who also heads up Europe’s IPO Taskforce. Clearstream’s COO Mathias Papenfuß completed the lively and engaging panel debate moderated by Reuters journalist Huw Jones.
Audience delegates also had their say – electronic voting questions involved over 200 interested guests and helped gauging their opinion on some controversial aspects of the CMU’s implementation. Quizzed on whether the UK should be in or out of an EU CMU, the audience were vastly in favour of “being in”, with a majority of over 90%, but voting results also indicated that 2019 would prove an optimistic deadline for the completion of the main building blocks of CMU.
These controversial questions and answers generated a significant social media buzz that people could follow on Twitter via the event hashtag #ExchangeOfIdeas.
And finally, for further interest, readers may be interested to know that Deutsche Börse Group has just recently published a white paper setting out key Principles for a European Capital Markets Union.