FCA Grants First Raft of APA Approvals for MiFID II Reporting

The FCA has granted the following entities APA authorization: Abide Financial DRSP Limited, Bats Trading Limited, Bloomberg Data Reporting Services Limited, the London Stock Exchange, Tradeweb Europe Limited and Xtrakter Limited (now rebranded as Trax).

MiFID II requires third parties publishing data to meet certain organizational requirements to be authorized as APAs, which are then permitted to publish post-trade transparency reports on behalf of investment firms, to help those firms meet their reporting obligations under MiFID II. The deadline for MiFID II compliance is Jan. 3, 2018.

The APA application process opened on July 3, and is still open, so the FCA may receive more APA requests and grant more approvals, a spokesperson says. 

No ARM Done

The FCA approval process for Approved Reporting Mechanisms (ARMs) under MiFID II is also not yet complete.

So far, no providers have announced official ARM authorization, and the FCA has previously declined to comment on the progress of applications by potential ARMs to connect with the market data processor (MDP), as ARMs are now required to do.

 Of the entities listed as approved APAs, Abide, Bloomberg, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and TRAX operated as ARMs under MiFID I.