Jan 10, 2020 26 min read Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast

Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast 027

To the deputy CEO of BIVA, Mexico's second Stock Exchange Rodrigo Velasco. He is also resigning. His departure for personal reasons: all the very best for him.

Transcript

In the wake of the Golden Globes, the new year is underway. And indeed thanks to Ricky Gervaiss epic hosting, Anything I say about the business of bourses will appear like the apotheosis of the politically correct. Welcome to Podcast 27: Exchange Invest Weekly, the first edition of 2020.

Thanks for listening, My name is Patrick L. Young founder of Exchange Invest, here's a review of some major stories over the festive period on the first week of 2020, which have been making headlines in our daily newsletter devoted to the business of bourses.

Reuters hailed an exciting exclusive, just as the New Year was dawning: China holds British stock link over political tensions. They said according to sources. Of course, it was tough immediately not to suffer some degree of schadenfreude and indeed schadenfreude was fully eclipsing my inbox at that juncture, given the evidence can be discerned that a major exchange is saddled with management tending to the myopic, having refuted the excellent Hong Kong exchanges bid last year with a haughty “Our Connect is cuter“ defense, LSE finds itself outmaneuvered on all fronts as suddenly China un friends LSEG or so it seems. Geopolitically, the LSEG “C” suite looks plotting. If not, I'd right clods.

They've already wasted vast amounts on big data but don't seem to be able to process the data which ought to have been clear to them given their impeccable analog anachronistic - dating back to monopoly times - links to the UK Government. And let's face it, those links to the UK government are quite sublime, Fast Track mobile lines to the Prime Minister are commonplace when you're the boss of the London Stock Exchange group. Nevertheless, they didn't seem to see this coming in terms of what the Chinese might be doing to their Connect.

Ironically, some of the jingoistic protectionist lamebrains masquerading as the UK financial media, were eager to suggest home Kong Exchanges was a territorial risk for LSEG. Looks like the truth was quite the opposite. I have made a suggestion in one of my last podcasts before Christmas: we may have seen the high watermark for LSEG stock. Sadly, even in the micro short term, the Chinese government left London's legacy bourse business adrift in Asia. Instead of building the ultimate Trans Pacific Tiger from London to China via Hong Kong, LSEG has started the year on a self inflicted defensive tack in what promises to be a tough year for the group as the reality of the unreformable Refinitiv sinks in.

Of course, that was day one. By the time we got today two things had become well altogether more complex. It seemed perhaps the link was still open according to certain parties at the Chinese regulator the CSRC in China.

So it doesn't really matter: the headlines are then being written: the Wall Street Journal. “The Shanghai London Stock link is a financial white elephant.” “politics are behind the London Shanghai Stock linkage” said the Gulf News. Really truthfully Ladies and gentlemen, whether the London Shanghai Connect is open or shut, and indeed, even when it's open, it's proven a remarkably anemic link so far, users are now going to avoid the linkage in favor of the more stable Hong Kong Exchanges - China mainland links amidst the perception that LSE is a hapless passenger hostage in the UK - Sino realpolitik, Whatever the truth of the matter is somewhere along the line, somebody badly damaged the LSE’s aspirations in China. Who's going to risk paying all the money for a secondary listing when there's the possibility that the plug is being pulled, has been pulled or could be pulled, albeit as the Chinese were apparently at pains to strike In the original sourced article by Reuters for only a temporary period of time? One good piece of news coming out of the LSE was common sense is prevailing according to Raffaele Jerusalmi, the head of Borsa Italiana is not up for sale.

Rafa was killing speculation on something I always found illogical. Then again, it has to be said sometimes the LSEG may not be perceived as, is a logical entity at group level. The other interesting snippets to come from Raffaele was the fact that there will be no merger of Tradeweb to MTS yet. Hmm. That's very interesting because I actually didn't think there was speculation about a merger of trade web to MTS yet.

When it comes to writing stories over the Christmas period, I do sympathize with members of the Fourth Estate as they try to source information to fill newspapers. So it was the Brussels Bugle, they actually found something quite fascinating. It was actually hidden in plain sight: China is effectively the fifth biggest Euroclear shareholder. That's the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund for investing its foreign exchange reserves Safe investment company, it happens to be holding 4.26% of Euroclear and even has a representative on the board. Of course, that may help gossip pivot to whether or not Hong Kong Exchanges might try to get involved in the grid Imperial carve up that lies ahead for Euroclear, but this appears to touch tenuous at first glance, albeit… well watch this space...

Euroclear is going to be one of the big topics of 2020. Another panel big topic growing already for 2020 years is the National Stock Exchange of India. The slightly tarnished jewel in the crown of digital markets in India has seen a couple of big stakes being sold already this year. 113 million dollars worth of stock was sold by the state owned IFCI bank over the Christmas period. Meanwhile, SBI another banking Institute has been inviting bids for sale of up to 1% of its NSE shares. - That's a 1% stake in the whole company. Very interesting all together, given the fact that two other stories are doing the rounds. The National Stock Exchange has again approached Sebi for an IPO we heard, indeed, Vikram Limaye, the CEO and MD went further and commented that NSE will launch an IPO by September this year. Now that's absolutely excellent news as NSE tries yet again, to launch the IPO it has been threatening, preparing, promoting, or indeed possibly dodging, if you remember all that way back fighting off in various measures, for over a decade. Make no mistake Sebi dislike free markets applying to market structure. But this will be another step forward for the Indian infrastructure despite the regulators, particularly as the somewhat tarnished NSE brand seeks to recover from its recent issues. In the meantime, simultaneously, looking towards the idea that universal bourses are now actually permitted. National Stock Exchange it emerges, is having discussions with NCDEX - in which it still holds a significant stake - hoping to acquire the national commodity derivatives exchange. So far, well, things don't look too good. There seems to be a huge argument about price going on. But we shall see: the negotiations have a long way to run yet. Meanwhile, bottomless pit alert: Euro CCP! Now we know quite clearly why they were so late with filing their accounts in the UK during the course of last year. They need 1.5 billion euros to fix weaknesses that were discovered by one of the ESMA stress tests. Now that's a modestly galactic sized black hole, particularly given the fact that we're talking about a CCP that actually only processes cash equity markets, not derivatives at the moment. At the same time. It's interesting because Euro CCP were very keen to stress the fact that they are still profitable “as a going concern.” But it's like a rather interesting concept that you can be profitable “as a going concern” while needing 1.5 billion euros in additional capital in some way, shape or form! Nevertheless, moving swiftly on, this does help clarify why CBOE jumped in and acquired the business recently for a relatively low price overall. And Euronext didn't want to be in the bidding. Because clearly, Euronext, although they were originally a minority shareholder in EuroCCP, they want to keep their credit line open: 1.5 billion euros is going to be a lot more productive for them. Or so I'm sure in the mind of Stefan Boujnah, it plays out if they can make some sort of a future acquisition. Now of course, what would that be? because as we've heard before, Borsa Italian is, not for sale, does that mean that they're going to come in and make a bidding war for Spain? Well, it's been many weeks since SiX jumped the gun and got their advantage going forward to talk about buying the BME. Who knows? Something has gotta happen in 2020 for Euronext I'm sure and I mentioned they're going to be bidding aggressively on something.

One thing they're not going to be bidding aggressively on me thinks is the Istanbul bourse. Borsa Istanbul once trumpeted as being hopefully a multinational, internationally held stock by all manner of investors.

You may remember that various private entities were invited but they were somewhat lukewarm in terms of acquiring stock, NASDAQ got some stock as a result of the deal that they did to supply the technology and the software system to pay the exchange a few years back, which they ultimately sold to the sovereign wealth fund. And so tonight, after the controversy at the end of last year, where the, as you may remember, new CEO once spent a little bit of a time in high Dudgeon with the American authorities having been prosecuted for sanctions busting... that proved a step too far for EBRD to hold their stake. And so they've sold their 10% to again, the Turkey sovereign wealth fund, That now leaves effectively Borsa Istanbul fully owned by the sovereign wealth fund. And therefore, while it's an interesting internationally oriented bourse, it has ended up with an entirely domestic shareholder base after 10 years of trying to internationalize.

Elsewhere, a little win for NASDAQ before Christmas, they were awarded $78 million by a Manhattan federal judge in a breach of contract lawsuit concerning alleged ETF theft.

TP ICAP,, they're moving. And here we have a very interesting moment. They're not moving their new HQ to somewhere in the Eurozone. Far from it, they're actually moving it out of the UK, but they're going to go to Jersey, that wonderful and exciting small offshore island which is closer to France in geographical terms, but ultimately a lot closer to the UK and the way it approaches business and actually has some extra tax incentives on top to make it more sexy still for the major corporate holder.

At the same time, TP ICAP made a bolt on acquisition. Actually on Christmas Eve, it was announced they're going to buy Louis Capital Markets And Mid Cap Partners, a private brokerage group.

Over in Tokyo, we had publication of the final report by the specialist study group: big changes coming to the stock market there. Meanwhile, in terms of a pithy column, the New York Post had Uber And Aramco prove that free markets work better: well worth the read; good pithy, punchy analysis, which demonstrates just why public markets are the best way to achieve a price for a company or indeed any form of asset.

Now, over in terms of managing to build exchanges. Beijing's plans to bolster non- Hong Kong exchanges were deemed a flop by the Nikkei Asian Review. Meanwhile, however, the South China Morning Post noted us to a certain degree, a word of caution why Hong Kong should not dismiss Macau’s ambition for a Yuan denominated Stock Exchange. Equally I would have to add the whole concept of Macau becoming less gambling hub more financial center. doesn't have to be a zero sum game. After all Dublin's International Financial Services Center IFSC was ridiculed when it first emerged as something that simply couldn't work, but it has become a major player despite sitting right on the doorstep of the world's most cosmopolitan financial center in London. Macau can find niches that for whatever reason Hong Kong cannot access, and both can prosper.

Over in Africa, the African exchanges lobby group, they are planning to link together seven bourses by 2021 which will be very exciting and meanwhile, arbitrage opportunity of the month. possibly even of the year in the decade, Russia, a nation not unknown to be beset by sanctions on various occasions, they're going to launch a stock exchange specially for sanction companies. Actually, in some ways that's rather a brilliant move. I mean, not that this ought to be construed in any way as an encouragement to break any partners sanctions, according to wherever you might be a citizen or wherever your your business might be based. But the idea that ultimately, for those not covered by sanctions on investing in a particular area, company or zone, the idea that the market solution is the best in order to manage to find value for those companies, corralling stocks and bonds on a similar platform...So they can all be priced in a similar way, according to whatever the metrics of those sanctions are, makes a lot of common sense allowing some element of homogeneity of analysis, and ultimately, of course, it's another bourse and every extra bourse is good news for the world of exchanges.

Philippine Stock Exchange they've become landlord. They're hoping to launch their own realty company as early as 2020 having completed the renovation of the former headquarters from which they've moved.

Less encouraging news coming from the Delaware Stock Exchange project where the New Castle county - one of their executives - has called the founders of the Delaware Board of Trade, probably criminal. Hmm, that is not a good parish headline in any way, shape or form. Speaking of other bourses that appear to have failed, the Scottish Stock Exchange plan was apparently scuppered by a funding failure that might confirm the many rumors that they didn't make payroll during the course of the fourth quarter of last year, tragically.

Elsewhere, a delicious story, Guyana Stock Exchange, the stock exchange, which only trades on Mondays, a lovely quotation from Mr. Edwards, the general manager since 2005. “People walk by here all the time and say, I never knew Guyana had a stock exchange.” I'm sure even a lot of parishioners share in that viewpoint. Good luck to Guyana, and keep making liquid markets, even if it's only for one half hour, one day a week. It's still a marketplace. And that's a wonderful thing. Speaking of other wonderful markets, China's Ganzhou province have launched a rare earths exchange somewhere we can get a spot price for all the curious bits that make well, amongst other things, lots of electronics including the mobile device that you're listening to this podcast on, fully function.

Starting this week, Charles Lee Direct: offered a clear vision for a new decade and what a decade it has been for Hong Kong exchanges and it's remarkable chief executive. The best is yet to come, he says, as Hong Kong's bourse, of course, reclaimed the world's IPO crown during 2019. It's a very upbeat message. But then again, who wouldn't be upbeat given the fact that talks are being mentioned in the newspapers that manland mega techs are talking about secondary listings in the wake of the incredible Alibaba listing of the last quarter of last year, amongst others C trip and Netease.

Over at Liquidnet, they are seeking dismissal of the sexual harassment lawsuit against CEO Seth Merrin. Meanwhile, I suspect the lawyers are going to be busy round at liquid net the leading original and some might say best block trading facility in the world because Blockstream which is some sort of a crypto exchange, have introduced a facility called Liquid.Net.

Another day, another example of quasi-cyber squatting from the broadly juvenile (when it comes to corporate governance) crypto bourse segment. Doubtless Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne, or whoever are Seth Merrin’s current appointed corporate legal advisors, will soon ensure that Blockstream learns an elementary, some might say rather expensive lesson in due diligence being wise before you make a launch announcement.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange there's a light at the end of the tunnel. about de mutualization. De mutualization has been one of those long running deals that never quite seems to appear, similar indeed to the NSE in India. Maybe it's just something to do with being called NSE whether it's Nigeria or National? Perhaps that's the problem. They just can't seem to get a deal off the ground. Maybe there was a witch, put a hex on NSE IPOs many years ago, who knows?

BlackRock Meanwhile, they are now holding 3.545% of Bolsa Mercado Espanoles, BME who are of course, as we know, under a bid from the SiX exchange of Switzerland.

20:42

Often we don't have time to talk about “BigWorld” in this podcast. But nonetheless, I'd like to get there today. Because we had the incredible crossover, where BigWorld is usually an opportunity in the Exchange Invest daily newsletter to talk about something that's happening in the big wide world that may or may not impinge upon the parish. In this case, we actually had our first instance in seven years of seeing direct correlation between the two! For our former parishioner, Kelly Loeffler, the former CEO of Bakkt before that the absolutely brilliant head of Communications at the Intercontinental exchange has been sworn in as the new US Senator for Georgia. “it's a great day. I'm very excited.” we overheard Vice President Pence remarking at the swearing in. Frankly, I couldn't agree more. This marks Kelly Loeffler being the first parishioner to go from the mainstream in the bourse business to the mainstream in elected BigWorld in the history of the Exchange Invest newsletter. All the best once again to Kelly, who becomes the 27th woman in the Senate: Male / female parity is a way away, but the Delta of diversity is improving. The capitol has another highly capable executive who understands the needs of entrepreneurs and growth businesses in regulated markets.

Perhaps the most frustrating element of this whole discussion is with her accession to the Agriculture Committee, and therefore the opportunity to provide some very judicious insight and analysis of the operations of the CFTC. Many frankly charlatans or worry mongers or indeed worrywarts of the left have been out there, including even the Wall Street Journal shrieking about conflict of interest. Why, why, why, given the fact so much of the US parliamentary system has already been tempted by what have been the very very non transparent acts of many insider dealers within the parliamentary democracy of the USA should we worry about something so transparent as adding the talents of Kelly Loeffler who has already said she will clearly recuse herself when the need arises. I believe Kelly Loeffler being in the position she is in the Senate is a great opportunity for a very highly capable executive, a woman executive at that, and someone who understands our business, the business of bourses, and that's going to be good for free markets, for freedom, for liberty for prosperity, and ultimately for the benefit of the United States of America’s citizens and ultimately, given the position of the USA as the world's largest economy, the citizens of the world. Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the roaring 20s. I couldn't be more optimistic at this moment. Lots of terrible things may happen, but this is going to be a very exciting decade for the parish and for financial market infrastructure.

In people news, the Pakistan Stock Exchange have appointed their new CEO after a six month wait following the rather unfortunate exit for a conflict of Interest problem of the previous Canadian CEO. Farrukh Khan all the best to him. He's going to be overseeing what is a very interesting and dynamic bourse. Now of course with that key Chinese stakeholder group that have invested and are providing technology to power the boss.

Ian McNaughton all the very best to him, he's resigned as the chairman of the Jamaica Stock Exchange and stood down on Christmas Eve. Elsewhere in the wake of the departure, the elevation of Kelly Loeffler to the United States Senate representing Georgia; Bakkt, the operation that used to run the cryptocurrency exchange arm of the Intercontinental Exchange Group, they appointed the very very experienced Mike Blandino as CEO and Adam White, the COO has been elevated to President. Congratulations to Robert Woods. He's a new member of The board of the Australian Stock Exchange and meanwhile it'll be interesting to see what happens when Janice Rubin starts work. She's going to be investigating claims against the CEO of TMX. Lou Ecclestone, of course, emerging from some rather unfortunate appearances of what might be at the very very least described as frat boy antics within the operations of Bloomberg News. Bloomberg News, of course, being the propaganda arm of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and his attempts to become president of the United States of America.

Hong Kong exchanges. They've had a tricky couple of days.They've lost a few senior executives. One of them was Roland Chai. I can’t say I was really that surprised given the fact that Rowland's family were in the UK, it was always going to be tough commuting across the considerable distance to Hong Kong. So it's not surprising that he's decided after several very successful years impacting on the Hong Kong Exchanges CCP to return to the UK Particularly at this very, very exciting moment where Brexit and all of the opportunities that bring are going to be upon us starting, of course, from January the 31st of this year, that will be a date approaching much, much faster than we could possibly have imagined last year, where we seemed to have endless decay, decline and a general lack of government in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, James Fok, who's also no stranger to the UK markets, he's got considerable investment banking experiences there. He's going to be seconded to the London Metals Exchange for nine months, which should be interesting as we see him, looking to take a strategic consideration for the future of the asset within Hong Kong Exchanges, and how best to approach what's going to be a very exciting coming decade of metal upheaval. All the best in the meanwhile to Till Roser, who's become head of strategy at home in Hong Kong, filling Jiames’ previous position.

Over at the London Stock Exchange they finally found a former investment banker (new shock. It's all investment bankers only. It seems at the LSEG these days) Murray Roos originally from South Africa. He's joined as Group Director Of Capital Markets. Now that's filling a position which as you may recall, Borsa Italian’s boss, Raffaele. Jerusalmi was due to handover on January the first this year. But that departure, at least that move, has now been delayed until Roos arrives at Paternoster Square in a few months when presumably his gardening leave is up. Meanwhile, Raffaele Jerusalmi continues to run the Borsa Italian group which of course as we said at the head of the bulletin is not apparently going to be sold by the LSEG which is quite sensible.

To the deputy CEO of BIVA, Mexico's second Stock Exchange Rodrigo Velasco. He is also resigning. His departure for personal reasons: all the very best for him. And meanwhile, over at Tadawul interesting, a former LSE executive invasion in some ways, the influx is two non executives taking up board seats. One of them is going to be Xavier Rolet, who had a long and distinguished career as CEO and during a period of internal exile, one might argue that it was behind the tea trolley... but at the same time, he's going to be joining the board of Tadawul as will be Mark Makepeace, the founder and CEO of FTSE. All the best of both of them for what should be a very, very interesting period advising and working on board matters with of course, the exchange, which had the incredible success last year with the IPO of Saudi Aramco.

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Finally, one fabulous piece of news, highly significant in the world of wonks and UK politics, Michael Spencer, the founder of ICAP, founder of Nex, the man who just sold it to the CME and remains actually I believe their largest individual shareholder. He has been appointed as chair to the Center for Policy Studies based in Westminster London. Now the CPS is the most influential think tank in Britain in my opinion. It was founded in the 1970s as the de facto incubator of Thatcherism itself, founded by Sir Keith Joseph, Alfred Sherman, and indeed, Margaret Thatcher. Pparishioners may recall I have occasion to have written for the CPS as website CapX, such as the “EU’s Euro Clearing Plan Is An Act Of Protectionist Self Harm.” Anyway, Michael taking over from Maurice Saatchi is excellent news as chairman of the CPS.It’s good news for free markets. It's good news for British politics, and it's great news for Robert Corville and the CPS team in the wake of a roaring 20s Risorgimento, in the wake of the long awaited outbreak of government led by Boris Johnson endorsed by his emphatic Brexit general election victory on the Number 12 last year, Michael is the ideal Chairman to drive the CPS agenda forward for a better Britain.

In regulation news this week. ESMA have extended the recognition decisions for three UK CCP in the event of a no deal Brexit.

Realpolitik: #Zeroshock Expect lots of cliff edge headlines during 2020. We've already seen a lot of saber rattling this week while the Von Der Leyen presidency has got underway and indeed Mrs. Von Der Leyen herself turned up in London this week in order to say that, oh, there was no chance of the European Union being sufficiently organized to negotiate anything and less than, I don't know 500,000 million years or something. But certainly she doesn't think they can get a deal done by the end of the year, which is interesting because just on terms of free trade, the UK are also going to be discussing a free trade agreement with the USA amongst others. One of those deals will work out absolutely fine for the UK and frankly, the transatlantic deal could be a lot better than being stuck with the declining economy of the EU.

Anyway, this whole issue of extending recognition decisions and deadlines and understanding and believing in the UK CCPs will continue to be a huge political issue during the course of the year as the EU plays with fire and essentially tries to get more money from the UK in order to manage to fend off its own bankruptcy. I'm sorry, capital issues, wasn't that the phrase that was being used amongst others by euro CCP so far... They don't even need 1.5 billion they need like 39 billion out of the UK in order to stay solvent. We'll see what happens on that front. Nonetheless, for the time being, you can still use your London based CCP, of course on the day that you can't use your London based CCP out of the eurozone, then expect Hellfire and damnation and probably a degree of war with the United States of America. But that's probably for a different podcast.

The Financial Services Agency is calling for the streamlining of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. That's the regulatory side on what I was talking about earlier on from the report of the working group, and at the same time, there's a bit of a battle over the surplus of Sebi assets and cash from the money that they've been raking in over the years by regulating the Indian markets where various parties are hoping that they can get that into the coffers of the politicians so they can spend it.

Meanwhile curious MOU of the entire month has to be Astana’s Financial Services Authority and the Sebi themselves of India signing a cooperation agreement. Good grief, I mean what on Earth can there be in mutual cooperation and technical assistance that SEBI can offer? I thought Astana wanted to be a free market? I mean, given all the money they spent on people from the City of London and so on, frankly, it's worrying to think what Astana thinks they can learn from Sebi about free markets and such like. Hopefully, in reality, this represents a diplomatic nicety as opposed to a statement of intent on highest standard intending to go forward regulating in the future.

Meanwhile, the UAE: Their securities regulators have created a joint working group as they're trying to develop a roadmap for supporting market makers. Hurrah. And of course that brings us into the regulatory end of LIBOR: The New York financial services Superintendent Linda Lacewell, she announced action to ensure regulated financial institutions are prepared for the libor transition. At the same time, Kremlinologists will note what was a very very strange additional line in the headline of the press release itself. It read “key global reference rate unlikely to continue past the end of 2021.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, that doesn't sound like regulatory certainty to you or me, does it?, and indeed, AlJazeera no less. were discussing how regulators are in the dark as the sun sets on libor.

Elsewhere the SEC was urging audit committee focus on Libor transition and gap issues. All of these sorts of factors do tend to lead me to think that the whole libor transition thing is starting to hang by a thread once again, despite the good work that was being done a year or so ago.

Then we get back to the SEC proposals to improve the governance of market data plans. Frankly, I'm not really sure what they're doing here. But then again, the dog's dinner of Reg NMS is so hyper complex that it just does my brain in trying to think about it. Seeking to lessen control and perhaps simplify the cornucopia of data plans in the dog's dinner of reg NMS sounds like a sound idea. I am not averse to simplification nor I think are most people in financial markets. But neutralizing cost of data to all parties to help the big players is as unwelcome as the concept of potentially forcing large players to subsidize the public where they are paying for more expensive data distribution. It remains to be seen exactly what the SEC’s plans are, and hopefully the Kremlinologists will be translating that so that we lesser mortals who don't actually spend our entire lives worrying about the incredibly complex for no good reason whatsoever US cash equity market… and we can actually understand what's going on.

Meanwhile, the UK financial watchdog FCA are claiming that they're going to be honing data crunching to spot problems sooner. Yes, that's one of those sorts of proof pudding eating to discern in future whether or not this turns out to be a coherent digital advance or more, or indeed one might say it's a bit more “cool story, bro” kind of regulation, time will tell.

In technology: Once again the London Stock Exchange finds itself on the back foot. Good grief as I'm recording this it's only Thursday the ninth of January. Ladies and gentlemen, the Wall Street Journal claimed that last year's London Stock Exchange kerfuffle and shutdown was actually caused by some form of a cyber attack. That allegation that the UK was examining the possibility of a cyber attack triggering the London Stock Exchange outage was fabulous all together, if only, because the London Stock Exchange then spent several days trying to strenuously disown this story. The difficulty, of course, is in the modern era of digital media, much like the other story that they've been strenuously trying to discern this week about the whole business of whether or not the London Shanghai Connect is actually open temporarily not open temporarily, or whatever. The truth is, once it has managed to make its way out into a cornucopia of media and fed its way around the world. That tends to be a great deal of difficulty because that story has somewhat stuck.

Shanghai bourse they're launching a new market surveillance system.

The Jamaican central Securities Depository has gone live with the newly installed Depend from Percival and India's CRISIL who you may remember is nowadays an S&P Global division have bought the US data analytics company Greenwich Associates for 14 million US dollars.

Rounding out the week under the festive season and technology, NASDAQ trade surveillance, they're expanding their data discovery capacity: compliance officers and data scientists will now be empowered with access to normalized trading and compliance related data for deeper insights, aiding and the detection, investigation and prevention of market abuse. Hallelujah.

In Product news. Well, we're leading with Libor, Libor, Libor: “Why This Bank Is Ditching Libor. Now” the American Banker was discussing at one point, at the same time, the Wall Street Journal was saying the Fed’s Libor replacement will shackle small banks. “It's game time” according to the American banker, “Libor transition to pick up steam in the new year.” Elsewhere though, a lot more skepticism around. I mean, people are trying to understand quite what's going on. Some might say it's Sofr so good. But nonetheless, there's a lot more to consider... but this trading is picking up says the Wall Street Journal but debt sales are waning for the feds libel replacement, and trading in the CMEs Libor alternative are off to a slow start, noted Crain's Chicago business. Elsewhere in Libor related issues, the EBRD have demonstrated that while they may have sold out of the Turkey Stock Exchange, they are nonetheless committed to a better Turkish capital market, they are financing the expansion of turkeys Enerjisa Enerji which is essentially their way of trying to manage to find a new Turkish reference price.

And at that juncture, ladies and gentlemen, I could continue...I could give you a lot more interesting and exciting stories that have been within the pixels of Exchange Invest Daily over the course of the last few weeks. But for that I'm afraid you need to be a subscriber at only 200 US dollars per user per year. All are welcome: send me an email Patrick@derivativesvision.com and we'll be happy to give you a trial for two weeks so that you can have an idea of what's in the daily newsletter. But for now, from this, the newsletter of the bourrse business, the weekly review of exchanges across the world, this has been Patrick L Young, hoping that you will have a great week in markets. Thanks for listening.