Seems like equity and other capital marketplaces are

going through the ying and yang of fragmentation and

consolidation. Just as we hear about another merger, we read

href="http://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=38621"

target="_blank">about another new venue going live

or

href="http://www.jlninterestrates.com/2011/03/isda-sef-rules-should-provide-greater.html"

target="_blank">more regulation encouraging

competition. This provides market participants with a

problem, especially in terms of understanding the execution

quality they are enjoying and in knowing which venues are

must-haves (and which ones can safely be ignored for

now).

In Europe, the lack of a consolidated

tape has emerged as a universal and justifiable gripe amongst the

buy-side community. As well as making it difficult for them to

understand how good their execution quality really is, it also

makes it difficult to accurately value their investments. The

sell-side, too, wants to be able to prove its bona

fides in terms of best-ex and, of course, venues of

all shapes and sizes want to demonstrate their relevance to

different segments of the trading community.

None of this is lost on the European regulators but, the

question remains, what are we all going to do in the meantime

whilst the regulators and the industry work to solve the problem?

How will we get any independent view as to whether any particular

execution was best, good enough, or simply inadequate?

One for the clever chaps over at Fidessa Labs

……