Europe is focusing on how to grow its economy. Key to this is growing its capital markets – our post-trade world needs to contribute to this; it is a shared responsibility. In his session titled “Going for growth?” at the upcoming PostTrade 360° 2025 conference, Alan Cameron, the London-based head of advisory FIC client line at BNP Paribas, will consider why growth is important. His discussion will also take a critical look at some of the key themes at the conference and the extent to which they will contribute to expanding capital markets activity.
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Cameron believes that the creation of a single, pan-European infrastructure is unlikely. So how can we make our markets more efficient? He reckons that we need to focus on increasing competition, comparability and efficiency.
“Since the global financial crisis, we have been focused on rebuilding trust in European capital markets,” he says. “This has been essential. However, we now need to realise that our politicians and the public they represent are expecting everybody to do whatever they can to grow our capital markets.”
The right focus
He questions if we are working on the right things to promote growth and considers the impact of T+1 settlement, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), outsourcing, and replacing old technology. We need to be selective and ensure we are working towards the goal of growth. But this is not easy in our complicated ecosystem which has too much of everything – too many markets, funds, providers, CCPs, CSDs, and custody banks, as well as too much regulation.
“We need to focus on what we should be working on if we want to promote growth,” says Cameron. “Increasing efficiency and improving infrastructure are positive developments but it seems to me that we are still cleaning up a world that has just too much of everything.”
Efficiency is the word
Rationalisation is a prerequisite, although that alone will not be sufficient to take us into a new world where we can grow our European capital markets with some of the recommendations of the Draghi report and the Savings and Investment Union (SIU).
“Our job is to make capital markets more efficient to support these growth initiatives,” concludes Cameron. “My hope is that by focusing on processes that will promote growth, this session will give those in attendance an idea of what they need to consider in any future major post-trade project.”
