This week in the parish of bourses and market structure: Mega shock: Ant IPO raises the most in history and is then cancelled 48 hours before the first trades, after Chinese regulatory intervention. My name is Patrick L. Young. Welcome to the Bourse Business Weekly digest. It's the Exchange invest weekly podcast.
The stormy seas of Brexit remain with the EU regulators seeking to control trade from the bloc to the world's largest financial center - and now the EU’s deadly rival - London. First, the European Union, outlined their usual notion of prescriptive restrictions, and then London upset the applecart by being laissez Faire free marketeers with the customer's best interests a forethought.
This - to Brussels, an entirely alien notion of customer best execution - has created a perfect storm. The UK fundamentally believes in free trade and growing the pie. The European union believes in managed decline, protectionism.
How it took that long to drive that dichotomy to Brexit is a separate issue. However, the European Union are left looking spiteful and silly as a result of their attempts to protect their market while the EU financial center encourages genuine best execution in the interests of investors.
As the FCA head of international, Nausicaa Delfas noted.
“While we note ESMA’S recent clarifications to reduce the potential overlap of an EU and UK securities trading obligation. We chose this simple armed, comprehensive approach rather than replicate restrictions based on the jurisdictions of the share issue or the currency in which the shares issued.”
The naked stupidity of the EU is obvious, ladies and gentlemen... and investors actions will reflect the UK open market stance over the long term.
It was a wildly busy week for results in the parish. All the deals were in Exchange Invest daily newsletter, no person can afford to be without it in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast, let's look at some edited highlights from the first to the last excellent parish results.
...Well provided you bookend them around the period after NASDAQ and before ICE for in the middle, there was mediocrity. That ICE “excellence as usual” report could be blithely dismissed as typical of their superior management structure, but they deserve the plaudits to be sung from the rooftops. Team ICE consistently excels as others - at best - stagnate.
If the others can't improve their game to compete with ICE, or indeed the Adena era NASDAQ, then the parish will look markedly different in three years' time. Certainly what were once strutting predators, now look more like simpering prey. If only antitrust would acquiesce.
Some results this week, also from CBOE, TMX, and even Dar Es Salaam, the latter capitalizing on election year volatility amongst other factors in their first nine months of 2020.
Now most results are in we can easily divide the parish in two, not by market cap of operating company as per Young's pyramid, but by management aptitude.
Thus, we have the category of “they get it” led by NASDAQ and ICE who demonstrate rigorous strategic customer centric, shareholder centric management. Then we have all the others championed by CME and DB1 - alas - but also including the lackluster London Stock Exchange Group, more who demonstrate C-suites more in the throes of rigor mortis....
