Leaving the maintenance of standards to others – to the sell-side, to public authorities and regulators, or (worst of all) to no-one, as happened a decade ago – cannot serve either your interests, or those of your investors. In my remaining remarks, I want first to review the strong progress that has already been made on developing and embedding the Code, including in some buy-side firms. I will then turn to review four specific concerns sometimes heard from buy-side colleagues still unsure about signing up, and set out what I hope will be persuasive responses. Strengthening buy-side adoption is one of the Global FX Committee’s top priorities for the coming year – and we have asked senior figures from both sides of the market to lead that work, working either as individual liaison representatives, or as members of a new buy-side outreach working group. I am pleased to see several of them here today – including David Clark, Robbie Boukhoufane and Richard Purssell – and I know they would be happy to answer any questions you may have, either now or later. Take up of the Global Code: progress so far Before turning to review progress, I must first confess more than a little self interest in this subject.
In my current role, as Executive Director for Markets at the Bank of England, Chair of the London Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee, and a member of the Global FX Committee, I have a responsibility to foster strong, efficient and fair foreign exchange markets in sterling and other currency pairs. But I was also in at the birth of the Code itself, because in 2014-15 I led the team that produced the Fair and Effective Markets Review, which recommended amongst other things that the ‘Global Preamble’ produced by national FX committees in March 2015 should be expanded into a full-blown Global Code, sweeping away the various national texts that preceded it, and setting a new standard for trading practices and behaviours in a market that urgently needed reform. Two years later, in May 2017, the Global Code was launched, setting out a common set of guidelines for good practice in the FX market. The Code contains 55 principles covering ethics, governance, execution 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  2  and transparency, information sharing, risk management, confirmation and settlement; and it tackles aspects of current and future market development, including electronic trading, algorithmic trading and prime brokerage. The drafting process was a truly global effort, taking two years and involving central banks and market participants, including buy-side, sell-side and end-users, from 16 jurisdictions around the world. Many of you, or your institutions, played a vital role in that process. Takeup of the Code, which is voluntary, has grown rapidly.