After a bombshell poll result at FILS Europe on Tuesday, consolidated tape providers (CTPs) have hit back at the idea that the tapes are not useful.
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A second poll revealed that 19% of the audience did not see the consolidated tapes as relevant. Some firms – such as US$2.2 trillion AUM giant Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) – just have not committed to consuming them yet.
“As with many buy-side organisations, it’s a big move for us to onboard new data delivery or a new system. It takes time. We are a global organisation, so it’s natural for us to consume both [UK and EU] tapes. The discussion is then how we do that,” said Vegard Vik, the firm’s special advisor, market structure and strategy.
He added that the prospect of a third party aggregating and enhancing the data was intriguing, and could be a good fit for NBIM.
“The commercial hypothesis has always been that the majority of users will come through vendors and redistributors,” said Francesco Cicero, CEO of EU CTP FairCT.
“We work with those distributors to get the connectivity in place, so that the end user will have no friction whichever channel they decide to use.”
Two buy-side speakers, Anuj Thakur, head of credit trading at Nordea Asset Management and Valerie Nannette-Dan, head of EUR & CHG IG trading at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said that they were undecided on whether they would consume the tape directly or go through a third-party.
“We have an open mind. We’re testing, but we don’t have an answer yet,” Thakur said.
On the question that the tapes’ data needs to be cleaned and further analytics provided before it can be useful, both FairCT and UK CTP Etrading Software countered that this is outside of their regulatory-mandated remit.
“Our job is to collect information from the market. We are strictly controlled by regulation,” Cicero said.
That said, the CTPs are responsible for the first level of data cleaning – flagging any suspicious trades.
“To me, these guys are utility providers. They’re like water companies – if they provide polluted water, over time, that will destroy the business model,” Vik said.
“The outlier flag will keep being enriched, with more checks being added as time goes on. Ideally the end user will know exactly what check triggered the flag, and they can make their own decision of whether they think it is suspicious.”
“The tapes are supposed to be a foundation. The next layer is aggregators and analytic providers. Cleaning and additional analytics will be made available by the proper companies,” Cicero added.
Etrading Software is developing its own version of this through ETS Connect Plus, a value-add proposition.
“We will wait and see what other areas the downstream aggregators can provide,” said Vik.
“I would expect to see algorithmic ingestion of the tape,” Thakur added.
“I also expect to see more internalisation, both on the buy and sell side. If you are a bigger firm, you have more incentive to internalise flow, especially bigger blocks. There could also be the controversial practice that we see in the US, where a large ticket is left open because dealers don’t want to print on the tape.”
The general sentiment of panelists was that the tapes will improve exponentially.
“When TRACE launched in the US, it had a very different shape and form, and people were using it in a very different fashion. It will be the same here,” predicted Virgine Saade, head of EMEA government and regulatory policy at Citadel.
“In the US, academic studies have shown that the tape brought so much more transparency to the market. Now, 90% of trades are printed within the first minute of the required 15-minute window.”
Getting the information so quickly reduced spreads and trading costs and creates a deeper market, she affirmed.
Some audience members stated that they were not in any rush to get tape access themselves, believing that they will reap the benefits through others in the market, for free, later down the line.
There is some logic to this, Vik said: “I believe that the introduction of these tapes will add more liquidity to the markets and lead to a marketplace where you can transact more efficiently,” he noted, highlighting the long-term benefits the tapes could have on markets.
However, if data is being delivered by a third party for free, they will be in breach of redistribution agreements, explained Cicero.
Danesh added, “Do we have a free rider problem? No. I’m optimistic. If four of your five peers are taking the data and have more marketplace visibility, are you going to be the one who wants to be blind?”
To those who have not yet adopted the tape, Danesh had a simple message.
“Not everyone needs to be a leader. If you want to be a laggard, be a laggard.”
©Markets Media Europe 2026
