Randolf, MiFID II is nearing its six months anniversary. A reason for congratulations?

Absolutely. Looking back, I must say that the start went extremely well, considering the scope of this huge undertaking. For smaller firms especially, the burden was immense.What really impressed me was that all of our clients were ready. We all – as an industry – made it. Therefore, yes, there are plenty of reasons for congratulations.

This sounds almost overly optimistic given other voices critizing the shortcomings of the regulation.

I know it was a huge challenge, not only for us, but for the regulators as well, and they did a very decent job. There is always room to improve, this holds true for all areas of life. However, instead of talking about challenges or shortcomings, I would prefer to talk about opportunities as they tend to be overlooked. For us at Eurex, MiFID II opens very interesting opportunities in various fields. Enhancing order book trading, bringing OTC and exchange trading closer together, and increasing transparency and operational efficiencies by introducing new market models, are just a few examples.

One of the new market models you mentioned is your RFQ platform EnLight.

Exactly. While the regulatory agenda seeks to drive business to the lit markets, there will always be special needs when executing large orders without impacting the market. That is why we at Eurex spent a lot of our innovative power to create new market models under the MiFID II framework that meet both the regulator‘s demand for transparency and the industry‘s need for discrete execution of large orders. Our recently introduced RFQ platform addresses this issue.