A recurring theme throughout the multiple consultations undertaken on Matthew Chamberlain's watch to make progress along the London Metal Exchange's strategic pathway has been a goal of creating fairness between different types of member and market user with differing goals and agendas of their own.
Does Chamberlain think that the exchange has achieved the right balance between the differing aims that stakeholders have for the exchange now? "I believe we have got the balance right," he told Metal Market Magazine. To give an example, he pointed to the process the LME now uses to handle "something that is still an open item and a controversial item." That is the exchange's approach to pre-trade transparency. The European financial regulations MiFID II were implemented on January 3, 2018, and pre-trade transparency has been one element of those that has been particularly "troublesome for the commodities markets across Europe." "Our members and members of other commodity markets play the important role as dealers of giving prices to their customers. The pre-trade transparency rules in MiFID II effectively say you shouldn't be giving prices to a customer if you haven't made those prices available to the whole market," he...