On 2 February trading commenced on the new Collateralized Interbank Market (MIC), a joint initiative by the Bank of Italy, the Italian Banking Association and e-MID SIM S.p.A., the company that operates the e-MID electronic interbank market. Participating banks are given the opportunity to execute transactions with medium-term maturities, in conditions of anonymity and sheltered from credit and liquidity risks.
While the landscape may evolve further in the future, in a financial system with a number of increasingly important hubs, as opposed to one dominant hub in London, it will be more important than ever for these hubs to be able to efficiently interact with one another and to avoid differences across Member States providing opportunities for regulatory arbitrage.