Mifid IT group spins itself off

LONDON – The Joint Working Group (JWG) of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) has lost its IT subject group because it has spun itself off as a for-profit think tank, JWG officials confirm.

The new think tank, to be known as JWG-IT, will be led by Mifid pundit PJ Di Giammarino, who also led the IT subgroup. He is the director of JWG-IT. The work of the IT subgroup had become "too big", says Di Giammarino. "Bob Fuller and I talked to the rest of the JWG co-chairs and asked if they were ready to put the resources in the IT group. They couldn't." Di Giammarino then wanted to shift the work to consultants, researchers or analysts. "We received a resounding no," he says. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein's Bob Fuller was a co-chair of the JWG IT subgroup with Di Giammarino. Fuller is not part of JWG-IT.

Both men also went to the European Commission, in charge of the Mifid reforms, to gain the resources necessary for the group to best address its goals. The answer was again negative, Di Giammarino says. In response, Chris Pickles, chairman of the JWG, confirms that funding is an issue. "The JWG is totally unfunded. It was created by four non-commercial industry associations," Pickles says. "I don't know if PJ came to us, but he knew we did not have the money." Pickles is also manager of industry relations at network services provider BTRadianz.

Thus, Di Giammarino says the IT group "really needed to be on its own". The new company will be funded by market participants interested in addressing the issues related to the IT implementation of Mifid. "The participants will be able to come together with their peers to work on the problems they are all facing," Di Giammarino says.

In a statement released in early April, the JWG says that "although participants from the IT Subject Group recently formed an independent commercial venture ... FPL, ISITC Europe and SIIA/FISD want to stress that this commercial entity is not affiliated with the Mifid Joint Working Group or their associations." These organisations are founding members of the IT subgroup of the JWG.

JWG-IT will employ up to 10 people. OR&C