ICMA meeting in Paris provided many fascinating sessions but the infrastructure session at the end only had a small audience. Yet that will have the most profound impact on the way Europe’s financial markets actually work. The speakers laid out some of the technical details about the ECB/Eurosystem’s projects of T2S and CCBM2. How these will interact with the CSDs and ICSDs is one of the more fascinating topics in the clearing and settlement “space”. The Banque de France is clearly positioning itself to play a major role as the entry point into the ECB’s liquidity provision as it is within the eurozone.
 

Is there an implied threat to London from all this? How will these long-term legal and technical projects interact with the imminent commercial transactions amongst the stock exchanges that initiate the trading activity that flows down the settlement chain?
 

Many questions…who has the answers? I look forward to comments to Graham@grahambishop.com.