December Global Regulatory Brief: Trading and markets

The Global Regulatory Brief provides monthly insights on the latest risk and regulatory developments. This brief was written by Bloomberg’s Regulatory Affairs Specialists.

Regulatory authorities continue to advance initiatives to improve financial market structures. The following market structure policy developments represent a sample of wider regulatory and policy coverage available to Bloomberg Terminal customers.

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• EU: Commission launches major reform of market structure
• US: SEC Chair outlines reform agenda for public markets
• US: SEC Chair outlines reform agenda for public markets
• Singapore: MAS finalizes its equities market review

EU Commission launches major package to fully integrate EU financial markets

The EU Commission presented the legislative package on market integration and efficient supervision to tackle regulatory and supervisory barriers within the EU that give rise to the fragmentation and underperformance of EU capital markets. It is the flagship initiative under the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) Strategy, and proposes a significant revamp of market structure and supervision with amendments to MIFID/R, UCITS, AIFMD, EMIR, CSDR, CBFD, ESAs Regulation, DLT Pilot, MICAR and SFD.

Context

More integrated capital markets are essential to support economic growth and achieving strategic priorities such as increased competitiveness. EU financial markets remain significantly fragmented, small and lack competitiveness, missing out on potential economies of scale and efficiency gains. Financial institutions still face varying requirements and practices across Member States, hindering cross-border operations and restricting opportunities for both citizens and businesses, negatively impacting the economy and the EU’s competitiveness.

Proposed measures

• Removing obstacles to market integration and leveraging scale: The package aims to eliminate barriers to integration in trading, post-trading, and asset management. It seeks to enable market participants to operate more seamlessly across Member States, thus reducing cost differences between domestic and cross-border transactions. Proposed measures include enhancing passporting opportunities for Regulated Markets (RMs) and Central Securities Depositories (CSDs), introducing ‘Pan-European Market Operator’ (PEMO) status for operators of trading venues to streamline corporate structures and licenses into a single entity or single license format, and streamlining the cross-border distribution of investment funds (UCITS and AIFs) in the Union.
• Facilitating innovation: The package focuses on removing regulatory barriers to innovation related to distributed ledger technology (DLT). It adapts the regulatory framework to support these technologies and amends the DLT Pilot Regulation (DLTPR) to relax limits, increase proportionality and flexibility, and provide legal certainty, thus encouraging the adoption of new technologies in the financial sector.
• Streamlining and enhancing supervision: Improvements to the supervisory framework are closely linked to the removal of regulatory barriers. The package aims to address inconsistencies and complexities from fragmented national supervisory approaches, making supervision more effective and conducive to cross-border activities, while being responsive to emerging risks. This includes transferring direct supervisory competences over significant market infrastructures such as certain trading venues, Central Counterparties (CCPs), CSDs, and all Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs) to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and enhancing ESMA’s coordination role for the asset management sector.
• Simplification and burden reduction: As seen in previous SIU measures, the package will simplify the capital markets framework further by converting directives into regulations, streamlining level 2 empowerments, and reducing national options and discretions to prevent gold-plating.

Next steps

The European Parliament and the Council of the EU (which brings together member states) will now kick off the negotiations on the final text of the rules. Legislative procedures generally last around 24 months, but given the sensitivity of areas covered in these proposals negotiations might well take longer.

SEC Chair outlines reform agenda for public markets

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins gave a speech outlining his regulatory ambition to revitalize U.S. public markets through a series of reforms.

Context

Chair Atkins underscored the importance of a regulatory framework that allows for a wide range of companies to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO). Moreover, he described the decline in the number of companies listed on U.S. Exchanges since the mid-1990s as a “cautionary tale of regulatory creep”.

Disclosures

Chair Atkins stated that reform of the SEC’s disclosure rules is required (i) to better root disclosure obligations in the concept of financial materiality and (ii) to scale requirements with a company’s size and maturity.

• Chair Atkins identified executive compensation disclosure requirements as one example of an area where reform is needed, following recent industry engagement that highlighted how disclosure length and complexity have limited usefulness.
• Chair Atkins stressed that SEC disclosure rules should scale with the company’s size and maturity, and that reconsideration of the thresholds that separate “large” companies, that are subject to all disclosure rules, from “small” companies, that are subject to only some, is overdue.
• For newly public companies, the “IPO on-ramp” could be developed further by allowing companies to remain “on-ramp” for longer than the first year currently permitted.

Other areas of reform

• Chair Atkins stressed that he aims to “de-politicize” shareholder meetings and return their focus to voting on director elections and significant corporate matters.
• Chair Atkins identified the importance of reform to the litigation landscape for securities lawsuits in order to remove “frivolous complaints” while maintaining an avenue for shareholders to continue to bring forth meritorious claims.

Looking ahead

The SEC will pursue a series of reforms over the coming months aimed at improving U.S. public markets.

FCA consults on framework for UK equity Consolidated Tape

Summary

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has launched a consultation on proposals to establish a regulatory framework for introducing a UK equity Consolidated Tape (CT), which will collect and distribute both post-trade data (including prices and trading volumes) and attributed pre-trade market data on equities from all UK trading venues and OTC trades. Alongside the consultation, the FCA has launched an engagement process for prospective consolidated tape providers.

Context

The initiative builds on the UK Wholesale Markets Review and forms part of the FCA’s efforts to enhance transparency and efficiency in UK financial markets. By establishing a consolidated source of equity market data, the FCA aims to increase the use of UK equity trade data and provide a comprehensive view of UK equity market liquidity.

Key takeaways

Design Proposals

• The FCA proposes a single equity CTP, selected via a procurement and authorisation process. The CT would include:
• Post-trade data for all equities traded in the UK (the FCA initially evaluated four potential tape models ranging from post-trade-only to deep multi-level pre-trade data); and
• Attributed pre-trade best bid and offer (BBO) from lit trading venues.

The CP also proposes latency requirements for both data contributors and the CTP. Principally, data contributors must transmit information to the CTP within 50 milliseconds of timestamp (with a 95% confidence interval). The CTP must publish received data within 100 milliseconds, with a 99.99% daily confidence interval and maintain 99.95% uptime during market hours. The FCA will monitor data quality metrics, latency and completeness per contributor and may require remedial actions or publish aggregate results.

Economic Model

• The FCA notes that data contributors (venues and APAs) must provide data free of charge to the CTP. While the CTP may charge users commercially, licensing must be transparent and non-discriminatory. The FCA is also not proposing a requirement for “free after 15 minutes” data release. Revenue sharing with data contributors is not proposed but the FCA notes this may be reconsidered post-implementation and there is also no mandatory consumption requirement for the CT.

Data Coverage and Governance

• The FCA notes the CT should be as comprehensive as possible and should include data from all UK trading venues trading a relevant instrument and all APAs publishing OTC trade reports in that instrument. In-scope instruments are: shares, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), depositary receipts, certificates. Trading venues and APAs must also connect to the CTP and provide data from the start of operations.
• Equity pre-trade transparency requirements: trading venues must supply a standard set of fields (price, volume, instrument ID, side, and timestamps) so that the CTP can calculate and publish a single attributed BBO across the market.
• Equity post-trade transparency requirements: the FCA proposes to use the existing information under UK MiFID as the input data to a UK CTP. APAs will not be required to send to the CTP information about the time at which they received details of a trade from a client.
• Intermediaries executing equity orders will need to consider if the equity CT’s data can improve their execution arrangements and monitoring compared to the data they already use.
• The CTP must publish: regulatory data on the status of instruments and trading systems; a database of historical post-trade data (updated daily); and a database of pre-trade BBO data, in the same formats as post-trade data.
• The CTP must maintain effective administrative arrangements to prevent conflicts of interest with clients, redistributors, and data contributors. Quarterly reports will also be required from the CTP to the FCA on data quality and performance and the CTP must also implement mechanisms for automated alerts on potentially erroneous data.

Next steps

Feedback on the consultation is due by 30 January. The FCA will review industry responses before sharing a policy statement in the first half of 2026, with the expectation that the CT will be operational in 2027. The FCA has also highlighted that it plans to conduct a post-implementation review two years after the CT launch.

MAS finalises its equities market review

Singapore Finalises Equities Market Review: SGX-Nasdaq Dual Listing Bridge, S$30m Value Unlock Package, and EQDP Expansion.

Summary

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has concluded the Equities Market Review Group’s work with a final report outlining major reforms to enhance the competitiveness of Singapore’s equities market. Key initiatives include a proposed SGX-Nasdaq dual listing bridge, a S$30 million “Value Unlock” programme, and the appointment of six new asset managers under the Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP), bringing total allocations to S$3.95 billion.

Context

The Equities Market Review Group was established to assess and recommend measures to strengthen Singapore’s position as a leading equities hub. Earlier tranches of reforms were announced in February and July 2025. The final report consolidates these efforts and introduces new initiatives aimed at improving market connectivity, liquidity, and investor engagement.

Key takeaways

• SGX-Nasdaq Dual Listing Bridge:

A proposed cross-border listing framework between SGX and Nasdaq will allow high-growth Asian companies (market cap ≥ S$2 billion) with global ambitions to raise capital in both regions. MAS will work with SGX to develop a harmonised prospectus disclosure regime aligned with U.S. standards to reduce regulatory friction. The new Board is expected to launch by mid-2026.

• S$30 Million “Value Unlock” Programme:

Funded via the Financial Sector Development Fund (FSDF), this initiative supports listed companies in enhancing shareholder value through three pillars:

• Capabilities: Grants (“Equip” and “Elevate”) to build competencies in strategy, capital optimisation, and investor relations.
• Communication: Toolkits, outreach, media engagement, and enhanced research coverage under the GEMS scheme.
• Communities: Peer learning platforms such as the SID Chairpersons Guild to promote best practices.

• EQDP Expansion:

MAS appointed six new asset managers—Amova, AR Capital, BlackRock, Eastspring, Lion Global, and Manulife—under the EQDP, with S$2.85 billion in new placements. Combined with the first batch (Avanda, Fullerton, JP Morgan), total allocations now stand at S$3.95 billion. These managers will support IPOs and broaden investor participation in Singapore equities.

• Market Infrastructure Enhancements:
  • Market Making: Incentives and grants to support liquidity in small- and mid-cap stocks, with details due in 1Q 2026.
  • Custody Reform: SGX to consult on broker custody accounts to modernise post-trade infrastructure and enable services like robo-investing and fractional trading.
  • Board Lot Size Reduction: SGX plans to reduce lot size for securities priced above S$10 from 100 to 10 units to improve retail access.

Next steps

• MAS will establish an Equity Market Implementation Committee, co-chaired by MAS MD Chia Der Jiun and SGX CEO Loh Boon Chye, to oversee execution of the measures.
• Regulatory consultations on the dual listing framework and custody reforms are expected in 1Q 2026.
• Further EQDP appointments will be reviewed in 2Q 2026.