Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast 029

Transcript   Could it be the new dawn on Refinitiv? Could it be sealed by anti trust in as little as three months?  All this and more and this week's Exchange Invest Weekly.    And a very fine Good day to you ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L Young, the founder of Exchange Invest, the daily newsletter of the bourse business. And indeed We lead this week with a very optimistic prognosis from the head of the Borsa Milano, part of the London Stock Exchange group, reaffirming that the borsa Milano is not up for sale for the time being. Raffaele Jerusalmi, has said that he believes that the EU might actually be able to decide on anti trust in the LSE Refinitiv deal within a few months. Strikes me as highly optimistic. On the topic of highly optimistic things, the week began with news via Reuters that, according to a survey by a consultancy, 1000 EU financial firms plan to open UK offices after Brexit. Gosh, that's a wake up call! A wake up memo In fact, to the remoaner flat earthers. Who would have ever thought that folks in the EU 27 might want to service the firm's based in the world's most dynamic cosmopolitan financial center, London and the UK?   Over at Clearstream, they've agreed an interesting deal: they're going to acquire 51% of the UBS fund distribution platform Fondcenter AG. Very interesting. UBS remains the minority shareholder at 49%. But nonetheless, Clearstream, a division of Deutsche Boerse demonstrating commercial acumen where Euroclear is currently even more, becalmed than usual due to shareholder issues.   Sebi ended last week with the exciting news that they were going to exonerate Ravi Narain and eight others in the infamous NSE dark fiber colocation case. Good news all round for the executives and former executives who no longer have a stain on their character. At the same time, the Bank of England was threatening a lot of stains on: Well, the pox on all your houses effectively! They're going to use all manner of “tools” to scrap libel, all those little incentives which are akin to a form of tension torture, rather like the medieval rock for a bank balance sheet.   The curious thing going back to that LSE story...only last weekend and the Sunday Telegraph; Jeremy Warner, their business columnist, had huge concerns that the EU is going to effectively take part in a backlash over the LSEG’s world leading pretensions, arguing that they're going to twist their antitrust policies to make a political Brexit point.   I can't say it would really surprise me but then again if it stops LSEG being anchored to the de facto dead weight of Refinitiv, Margarethe Vestager would ironically be doing London Stock Exchange group and the UK a great favor.    Of course, one of the big stories of the week was also about volume: the NSE, the National Stock Exchange of India, they've turned into the world's largest exchange in futures and options trading by contract. Of course there's a lot of headlines on this topic without much consideration of value of contracts traded. Parishioners may recall the similar discussions when KOFEX was trading massive numbers of contracts over in Korea 20 years ago, overvalued to suit crazed puntingHousewives in Seoul or Busan, amongst others. the NSE are to be applauded for their volume growth, but obituaries for the CME cash generation powerhouse are wildly premature, even if volumes were somewhat static year on year. That said, there are obviously going to be concerns in the United States of America and the big wide advanced world. Because it is clearly true that this is a great sign that Asia is rising, the volumes in small, emergin...