The
Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is now a reality.
This EU legislation will be a radical force for business change in
the financial markets, as well as a bearer of major technology
challenges in terms of data storage, security, and
transmission.
One aspect of Mifid is the "best execution" rule. By this,
financial institutions must store, and be able to retrieve,
information attesting to best execution in share transactions -
trades that take place in milliseconds but need to be capable of
reconstruction for many years to come.
That 85% of investment firms across Europe still have major work
to do on their best-execution policies is of less import than the
changes that Mifid will, in time, catalyse.
Mifid will bring more competition to stock exchanges.
Project Turquoise, an ambitious scheme to create a trading
platform to vie with Europe's established stock exchanges, is one
enterprise that has sprung up to take advantage of the new rules.
Boat, a trade reporting platform created by a group of nine
investment banks, is another. And although many banks are holding
back from making the required technology investments to enable
Mifid compliance, a tipping point is bound to come, and the money
will flow.
This confluence of rules designed to galvanise the European
investment industry with technologies that are, in any case,
transforming trading in financial markets is a harbinger of a
future rich in possibility for IT professionals. Often apologetic
about "being in IT, and not the business", IT leaders can look to
these developments with awe and satisfaction: technology is both
the hero and the future of business in this sphere. And it could be
so in others.
The CIO we profile in this issue, Maggie Miller of Warner Music
Group, earned her spurs in the City of the "big bang". She strongly
advocates getting out of your comfort zone and immersing yourself
in organisations undergoing dramatic change: having a go at risky
IT-enabled change, rather than hanging back to nitpick.