13.30 – 14.00 Registration and welcome coffee
14.00 – 14.10 Moderator’s opening remarks
14.10 – 16.00 Panel 1: Restoring the confidence in financial benchmarks
Possible discussion points:
- How do we increase the transparency regarding the accuracy of a benchmark, what it measures and what it should and should not be used for?
- Should there be any restrictions on the use of benchmarks?
- How should conflicts of interest be avoided?
- Who should ensure that the benchmark used is fit for purpose?
- How should third country benchmarks be treated?
- How can we create clear and transparent rules regarding contribution of data?
- Who should audit the contributed data, the index provider, an external auditor or the financial supervisor?
Speaker line-up
Luděk Niedermayer Member of the European Parliament, Shadow Rapporteur on Indices used as benchmarks in financial instruments and financial contracts
María Teresa Fábregas Fernández Head of Unit G3 – Securities Markets, DG MARKT, European Commission
Pierre Davis Associate General Counsel, McGraw Hill Financial
Alain Dubois Managing Director and Head of New Business and Product Development, MSCI
John Ewan Head of Fixings Business Development, Thomson Reuters
Dr Hartmut Graf CEO, STOXX
Moderator: Alp Eroglu Advisor, IOSCO
16.00 – 16.10 Coffee break
16.10 – 18.00 Panel 2: The integrity of commodity benchmarks
Possible discussion points:
- Are physical commodity benchmarks fundamentally different from benchmarks?
- Which aspects of the proposed regulation are submitters likely to find most onerous, and why? How would the proposed EU regulatory regime impact the quality of benchmarks? What is the likely impact of the number of submitters decreasing?
- How can the integrity of commodity benchmarks be enhanced? What transparency and governance arrangements should be put in place for commodities benchmarks?
- Should the Regulation entrust PRAs with a police/supervisory role on submitters given that MAD-MAR already covers the manipulation of all benchmarks?
- How important is the role of third country based submitters in ensuring high quality price assessments? Given that no other jurisdiction is planning to follow the EU proposed approach, would benchmarks move to other jurisdictions as a result of the proposed regulation? Could the move of benchmarks to other jurisdictions also cause trading to follow? Would there be an impact on European Energy security?
- Are there alternatives to the EC proposals on third country regime in order to avoid regulatory arbitrage? Do the IOSCO Oil PRAs Principles, which are applied to all commodities, already provide a robust basis for setting benchmarks in physical commodity markets?
Speaker line-up
Jonás Fernández Alvarez Member of the European Parliament, Shadow Rapporteur on Indices used as benchmarks in financial instruments and financial contracts
María Teresa Fábregas Fernández Head of Unit G3 – Securities Markets, DG MARKT, European Commission
Martina Tambucci Senior Officer, Markets Division, CONSOB and Chairman of the Council’s Working Group on Benchmarks
Dave Ernsberger Global Editorial Director for Oil, Platts
Ronald Backers Business Intelligence Liquid Bulk, Port of Rotterdam
Julie Winkler Senior Managing Director, Research and Product Development, CME Group
Moderator: Diego Valiante Head of Capital Markets Research, ECMI
