The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has led its proposal for new transaction reporting rules with the promise that it will save UK firms more than £100 million annually. But those on the ground do not expect to see their costs go down.
Cathy Gibson, global head of trading at Ninety One, told Global Trading, “As a global firm operating across geographic regions, with diverging reporting requirements, I would not anticipate significant cost reduction on the back of the proposed FCA changes on transaction reporting.”
The FCA estimates that firms spend approximately £493 million each year to meet UK MiFIR transaction reporting requirements.
Responses from the FCA’s 2024 discussion paper highlighted the burden of duplicative reporting across further regulations, such as EMIR and SFTR. For firms operating across jurisdictions, this reporting – and associated costs – are multiplied.
In Europe, ESMA is facing a similar battle to wrangle its reporting requirements. The results of its consultation on the matter are expected to be published in early 2026.
The UK regulator admitted that the data it does gather is often left unused: “We do not regularly use some of the importation we collect under these regimes, creating a potentially disproportionate cost on firms.”
In an effort to reduce reporting requirements, the FCA’s proposals intend to remove FX derivatives and six million financial instruments only traded on EU venues from reporting requirements.
Within the reports themselves, the number of fields that trading venues must populate would be simplified and the number of instrument reference data fields would be cut from 48 to 37. The long-term goal of the regulator is to adopt a “report once” principle, where firms would submit their data to a central repository.
The window for corrections to historic reporting errors would be reduced from five to three years. Systematic internalisers would no longer be obliged to submit instrument reference data.
Introducing these changes would support UK economic growth, protect market integrity and allow for more effective financial crime control, the regulator argues.
However, these proposals are the start of a long journey.
“The proposals in this CP do not remove all duplication or achieve complete harmonisation of requirements. This can only be addressed through a longer-term review of requirements across several regimes, involving the Treasury and Bank of England.”
Pegah Esmaeili has been appointed EMEA head of Virtu Technology Services
The promotion builds on her ongoing role as head of Virtu Financial’s Nordic region, which she has held since 2019.
Virtu Financial reported US$824.8 million in revenues for Q3 2025. The commissions, net and technology services division provided US$154 million of this.
Earlier this year, co-founder Douglas Cifu retired from the company, with Aaron Simons named CEO.
Esmaeili has 15 years of industry experience, with her career including roles such as director of Nordic business development at ITG and partner at Mariana Capital Markets. She also currently serves as diversity, equity and inclusion co-chair at Virtu Financial.
Measuring cross-asset transaction cost analysis (TCA) and trade performance still faces major constraints, says Baillie Gifford’s Petros Kyliakoudis, with unique nuances and complexities across varying asset types.
Speaking to Trader TV, the head of trading research and analytics discusses how his buy-side team approaches these challenges and evaluates cost and quality of execution for equities, FX, and fixed income. Kyliakoudis also shares how Baillie Gifford has adapted methods for feeding information between portfolio managers and traders, and unpacks the major lessons he has learned from his firm’s TCA and algo usage this year.
20 years ago, the first Market in Financial Instruments Directive was hailed by UK minister Ed Balls as bringing the benefits of competition to equity trading data. “From November 2007, the Government will no longer require transactions in shares admitted to trading on a regulated market under MiFID to be reported to that market”, he told Parliament. “This will allow new providers of transaction reporting services to enter the market more easily”.
We know what happened next. The market fragmented, and data became incomplete and more expensive. Just a year after MiFID I was implemented, the Investment Management Association complained on behalf of its buyside members, calling for a consolidated tape. Many years of distractions such as the global financial crisis and Brexit followed, but this week, the UK FCA finally announced…an equity consolidated tape.
In its consultation paper, the FCA said that the tape would bring benefits of up to £150 million over the next ten years. What they didn’t say is how much not having a consolidated tape cost the industry over the last 20 years. It was certainly a lot more than £150 million.
Mai Tanaka, Global Head of Trading, Nomura Asset Management
After years of stagnation and insularity, Japan’s buyside is now catching up fast. At Nomura Asset Management, Mai Tanaka and her team are helping to drive the country’s trading transformation
To encounter Mai Tanaka at the FIX Japan Electronic Trading Conference in Tokyo in October is like watching a celebrity in their element. The crowds part, heads turn and the audience of brokers, vendors and venue executives hang on her every word. And so they should: As global head of trading at Nomura Asset Management, Tanaka makes the ultimate procurement decisions for broker commissions, venue choices and trading systems across the company’s $664 billion portfolio.
Mai Tanaka, Global Head of Trading, Nomura Asset Management.
Tanaka’s role is even more important in the context of current developments in Japan. This is a country where until last year, the Japanese Financial Services Authority required paper records of trade orders, and buyside firms still communicate by fax.
After years of financial sector insularity and stagnation, Japan is going through one of its habitual episodes of rapid reform and openness to foreign ideas – in particular, electronic trading. Tanaka has made her commitment to that process clear by taking on the role of regional co-chair at FIX Trading Community, an organization whose purpose is to develop electronic messaging protocols.
Tanaka’s path to the top was not obvious at first, when she started her career as an FX trader at a succession of domestic Japanese firms. But things took off when she joined Nomura’s buyside operation, and began to gain a far broader range of experience. “At Nomura, I began trading FX, foreign bonds and futures and subsequently worked across a wide range of products, including short-term money market products, repo and securities lending, and Japanese equities”.
But it was a stint in London that gave Tanaka the crucial knowledge that prepared her for Nomura’s top buyside trading role. “I later served as a country manager in the UK desks and UK trading team, and returned to Tokyo to take up my current role in 2023”, she told Global Trading.
From the outside, Nomura Asset Management appears complex. There are about 700 Nomura AM mutual funds with $400 billion total AUM, ranging from Nomura’s flagship $90 billion Nikkei ETF to dozens of smaller funds. Less visible are about $260 billion of pension fund assets not listed as mutual funds.
With such complexity, it is no surprise that Tanaka needs a over 30-strong trading team. “In Tokyo, the team is split into two execution teams on the equity side and the fixed income side”, she explains. “Each team is then divided by product related to listed trading and the OTC trading”.
Overseas, Nomura Asset Management has a leaner trading footprint. “We have a UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Shanghai trading office”, Tanaka notes. As for the US, Nomura AM has no trading presence there at all.
The need to communicate
When compared with Nomura AM’s global army of portfolio managers, analysts, back-office staff and salespeople, Tanaka’s team appears small, but she has to communicate with them all. “We work closely with portfolio managers on a day-to-day basis, and also liaise with the post trading team, and we also have a regular interaction with sales team and the client relationship and client reporting teams”, she explains.
Part of Nomura AM’s complexity is the diversity of trading styles and wrappers, but the traders have to handle all of it, according to Tanaka. “We have both active and passive portfolios across equities and fixed income”, she says. “ETFs are also a key area of focus for us and each market links its own execution constellation”.
Nomura Asset Management.
There are ample opportunities for career development with such a portfolio, Tanaka adds, while her firm’s strategic priority to grow fees helps this process. “Our traders benefit from exposure to flow across the whole spectrum, which is an excellent experience for us. The passive side is bigger than the active side, but we encourage to get the new flow to the active side. This is our purpose”.
A time-honoured question for buyside traders is the allocation of trading alpha to traders versus portfolio managers. Nomura AM offers alpha opportunities to traders, without emphasising it too much. As Tanaka puts it, “We don’t carry a specific numeric, P&L target for trading alpha”, she says. “But everyone understands that generating trading alpha is part of the traders limit, so we monitor it continuously and also feedback execution results to PMs on a daily basis, and over defined peers as well”.
But first, the alpha has to be measured, and Tanaka explains how the challenges vary across asset classes. “I think Japanese equity is where we have greatest frequency of our trading, she says. “For Japanese equities, it’s easier to see the Alpha against the VWAP basis, or the benchmark basis, so the active equity portfolio manager gives some discretion to us in using the block trade, or which venues we use, or which brokers we use”.
Achieving this precision involves vendor tools, and Tanaka’s colleague Kenji Takeda, who runs equity trading within her team, provides more colour. For pre- and post-trade analytics, Nomura AM uses Bloomberg TCA (BTCA), while for passive execution, the firm uses Quick, a domestic vendor whose platform is widely used by the Japanese buyside for pre-trade analysis of principal flow for their passive funds.
Broker relationships
When it comes to brokers, on the equity side, Tanaka’s job is complicated by the fact that has to operate both within multiple regulatory regimes. “Our key regulatory constraint is that we have to comply with MiFID2 because we have investors from overseas”, she explains. “We have clients in Europe, and the UK, where unbundling remains a requirement under MiFID 2. But broker services in Japan are typically bundled, so reconciling this regulatory difference to meet client requests has been a real headache for us”.
When asked about the top brokers she uses, Tanaka reveals that sophisticated global banks are wooing Japan’s buyside with algos. “It’s difficult to single out brokers, but for Japanese equities, global financial institutions have invested heavily in algo development and those undoubtedly are influential in Japanese equity markets and among the domestic security firms, including our group”.
Tanaka credits corporate sibling Nomura Securities for competing in this algo arms race. “They are serious about securing an edge in the own exchange market. This is Japan, their own mother market, and are putting their capital into algo development too”. For the rest of Japan’s sell side, Tanaka has a diplomatic message. “We want domestic brokers to thrive, so we will continue to provide constructive feedback and support to the domestic securities firms”, she says.
One problem faced by Japanese buy side investors is the gaming risk arising from thin liquidity on lit market, which is attributable to the high participation rate of HFT firms.
Tanaka says that Nomura AM is starting to turn to newer electronic liquidity providers to mitigate the problem. “We use the liquidity providers as well. And I think their liquidity is a good solution to minimise the execution cost. So we seek their liquidity. They actually have a strength in bilateral trades”.
“It depends on the portfolio manager’s instructions, but while we mainly use the algos, sometimes we use bilateral trades for block trading. And we find that bilateral matching trades are often even more effective for reducing costs, a block trade is the best way to reduce the cost”.
Japan’s fixed income upgrade
Nomura Asset Management, UK trading desk
For fixed income, Tanaka’s experience in London provided insights she is now deploying in her home market. “From my time in the UK, the most notable difference was the depths of the credit market, and Japan’s bond market has only recently begun to attract more foreign investor flow following the BOJ move from negative interest rates to the positive one”, she says. “But even in Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) the dominant participants remain domestic investors, and the domestic bias is even stronger in the Japanese credit market”.
Tanaka believes that a combination of reform and improved technology will help Japan’s bond markets catch up. “The UK credit market I worked in is considerably deeper and with many more participants and a much larger universe of issuers”, she notes. “I believe that electronic trading is essential to capture broader investors flow, and that development of the repo market is also an important enabler for the credit market”.
Some factors are out of her control, she admits. “However, many Japanese corporates are cash rich and have little need to fundraise by issuing bonds, and investors often tend to buy and hold credit”, she points out. “These structural features mean change will take time”.
But before electronic trading in bonds can happen, Tanaka knows that she needs to measure the trading outcome, which is a tough problem. “For FX and fixed income, it’s so challenging to calculate the execution cost and alpha”, she says, with a sense of exasperation.
“For bonds, we perform the post trade analysis, but we are still exploring the best way to carry it out on the bond side, because it’s so difficult, it’s so challenging for us to see that. First, what is the fair price at the moment? What is the cost?”
From the perspective of vendors, Nomura AM is a huge opportunity because Tanaka is still making up her mind about who to work with in fixed income. “It’s challenging because we are still checking, not only big vendors, but also the TCA specific ones. They have a specific expertise in the TCA and have lots of strategies, so which is the best one? We are checking and hearing the details of these companies”.
This need for diligence is frustrating because electronic bond trading is already growing fast in Japan. “In bonds at this time, the electronic trading volume is higher than ever”, she explains. “Around 40% of the trading volumes is electronic. So that market is changing, we are still using voice trading for some big government bond trades.
In terms of bond platforms, a Godzilla versus King Kong type battle is already shaping up between domestic incumbent Yensai, owned by a consortium of domestic securities firms, and outside upstart Tradeweb, a battle that Tanaka is watching closely from the sidelines. “Tradeweb are chasing JGB volumes at Yensai, to win flow by offering a platform to global clients”, she says.
The missing Japanese consolidated tape
Meanwhile, Tanaka is also paying close attention to changes in Japan’s equity markets, where the Topix index recently hit an all-time high. “In Japanese equity markets, the Tokyo stock exchange (TSE) is driving market reform, and I believe those efforts are one of the reasons that overseas investors are coming into the Japanese equity market recently” she says. “They also introduced the auction mechanism to the TSE last year, and I expect further measures will be considered”.
Unlike electronic trading in bonds, for Japanese equities electronic trading has brought in high-frequency trading firms that are blamed for market impact problems by the buyside. With HFTs watching their every move, market participants are reluctant to provide liquidity. “In equities, the liquidity and the depth of the market are different from the other developed countries, the Japanese market has less liquidity and the depth of the market. So we want to see more inflows from the much larger universe of the world. We’d like to see a consolidated tape here. That transparency is the one of the best solutions to the participant”.
Investment bank Piper Sandler has launched a private markets trading function, appointing three managing directors for the business line.
Patrick Gordon, Kyle Mooney and David Ilishah join the bank from private marketplace Forge Global. Gordon and Mooney are co-heads of the division.
Reporting to Tom O’Kane and Mike Cox, co-heads of global equities, they will focus on trading equity shares of private companies.
Piper Sandler reported US$479 million in net revenues for Q3 2025, up 33% year-on-year.
Deb Schoneman, Piper Sandler president, commented, “As companies stay private for longer, demand for trading in private shares has grown significantly. [The appointments] will expand opportunities we can offer our clients to invest in high-growth private businesses or to monetise illiquid positions before they go public.”
Gordon spent close to five years at Forge as a director and senior director of capital markets, before which he was part of the equity research product management and institutional equity sales and trading teams at William Blair.
Mooney’s decade of industry experience includes more than four years at Forge, where he was most recently a managing director. Prior to this he was a director at SharesPost, acquired by Forge Global in 2020. Earlier in his career, Mooney was a senior associate at AllianceBernstein.
Ilishah spent more than seven years at Forge, becoming senior director of private capital markets at the start of this year. Prior to this, he was a fund controller at private equity and VC vendor Standish Management.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has approved JP Jenkins as a PISCES operator.
JP Jenkins provides a platform for private and unlisted company securities to be issued and traded. It reported capital and reserves of £247,275 at year-end 2022, its most recently available results. This marked a 25% increase year-on-year.
It was acquired by fintech InfinitX last year, making it a fully electronic trading platform. InfinitX reported capital and reserves of £143,891 for financial year 2024, recovering from 2023’s -£1,064.
A number of companies active on JP Jenkins delisted from the London Stock Exchange over recent years to join the platform, including Superdry, Prax Hurricane and iEnergizer.
Existing JP Jenkins member companies will be able to transition to the PISCES market if eligible. Currently the firm offers a match-bargain facility, which connects buyers and sellers using expressions of interest.
“JP Jenkins played a leading role in the design of PISCES,” the company stated.
Mike McCudden, CEO, added, “We have worked at pace to get this project over the line.”
LSEG was the first company to be approved as a PISCES provider, and also had an active role in the development of the service. In October, it announced that it would use ION’s Fidessa platform to support its PISCES auction events.
The regulatory framework for PISCES platforms is being tested in a sandbox, and will be reviewed by HM Treasury by June 2030. It will then be decided whether the framework is transferred into permanent legislation.
Yarkova-Valente has close to 25 years of industry experience and joins the firm from MTS Markets, where she has been a sales executive and senior sales manager since 2013.
Earlier in her career, she was a sales executive and business analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group.
Daniel Dempsey, head of UK market making, GTS Securities Europe
Daniel Dempsey has joined GTS Securities Europe as head of UK market making.
Based in London, Dempsey is responsible for building out the firm’s UK market making desk.
Parent company GTS Securities is a NYSE designated market maker. It also market makes in ETFs and wholesale and covers fixed income and FX.
Subsidiary GTS Securities Europe reported a US$496,761 loss for the financial year 2024.
Dempsey has 25 years of industry experience and joins the firm from Iress, where he has been a senior account manager since 2023. Prior to this, he was a UK market maker at Stifel.
Earlier in his career, Dempsey was director of equity trading at KBW and UK head of trading at Pictet Global Markets.
Notional amounts of equity swaps at the largest six US banks reached $4 trillion in September, while FX swaps hit $25 trillion as dealers sidestepped cash trading for bilateral over-the-counter derivatives.
Their use is controversial among the buyside, and the Bank for International Settlements thinks they are a source of systemic risk. But OTC equity and FX swaps keep growing on bank balance sheets, while a summer lull in trading losses appeared to vindicate the banks’ growth strategy.
According to Risky Finance analysis of Federal Reserve filings, the equity swap exposures of JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reached $4 trillion at the end of September, led by JP Morgan with $1.1 trillion notional of equity swaps and Goldman with $934 billion.
This compares to $800 billion of equity securities held by the same six banks at the end of the third quarter, meaning that each dollar of cash equity exposure was matched by five dollars of derivatives, including long and short positions. This comparison does not include equity futures or option positions.
With non-bank market makers such as Citadel Securities or Jane Street now dominating cash equity trading, bank-owned dealers have an advantage when it comes to derivatives, with their leveraged balance sheets allowing them to post collateral supporting their trillions of notional exposures. This gives them flexibility to noiselessly take on single stock or basket exposures on behalf of clients. However, there is concern among buyside firms that pre-hedging of orders by banks amounts to a form of front-running.
Having conceded much of cash trading to newer competitors, the banks drive to keep up using equity swaps forces them to increase exposures as market valuations reach eye-watering levels on the back of the AI boom. In the past year that has caused some firms like JP Morgan to repeatedly breach value-at-risk limits, attracting the attention of Fed regulators. However, that was not an issue during the third quarter, with none of the top six US banks reporting a VaR breach.
Meanwhile, FX swaps also grew to a record, led by Citigroup which had $9.5 trillion of the contracts. The contracts involve an exchange of currencies at the outset along with a forward agreement to swap them back again in the future. They are the most heavily traded FX derivatives in the market, with $4 trillion daily turnover in April 2025, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
FX swaps can be used to hedge the currency risk in equity exposures, but their main use is in yield enhancement for cash portfolios. The BIS has warned about the systemic risk of FX swaps based on their similarity to cross-border repo, although this has been disputed by academics.
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