The EU’s financial markets watchdog wants expanded powers to oversee major stock exchanges and other critical parts of the bloc’s financial infrastructure, as it bids to become a European version of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Verena Ross, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, said “there is clearly a political appetite” in the newly appointed European Commission to centralise more EU financial market supervision as part of a renewed push to revive the region’s struggling capital markets.
“Let’s evaluate in which areas it would make sense to move a step further to central EU supervision. We need to look particularly at all the cross-border systemically important infrastructure players,” Ross told the Financial Times, adding this would include exchanges, clearing houses and settlement systems.