Newsletter April 2012: New standards for financial market infrastructures

MADRID/BASEL – International regulators have issued new standards aimed at strengthening the resilience and reducing the operational risks of financial market infrastructures (FMIs). Often referred to as the plumbing in the global financial markets, the failure of an FMI can have disastrous consequences and cost users huge sums. These infrastructures, which include systemically important payment systems, central securities depositories, securities settlement systems, central counterparties and trade repositories, in fact performed well during the financial crisis. But their importance is growing as, for example, all standardised over-the-counter derivative contracts are cleared through central counterparties.