January 9, 2014 - The compliance technology and outsourcing vendor Global Reporting Company (GRC), which is jointly owned by the GMEX exchange trading technology provider and CoDiese advisory firm, is joining the REGIS-TR trade repository.

The move means the vendor can now offer corporate treasurers, investment managers and other buy-side customers an easy outsourced compliance solution for the imminent start of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), which comes into effect on 12 February and demands financial market participants report over-the-counter (OTC) and listed derivative transactions to a centralised trade repository (TR).

The end-to-end buy-side compliance solution is a fully outsourced, neutral service that will run on the REGIS-TR platform, says GRC. It will enable financial market participants to spread their trading risk by continuing to use multiple prime brokers, while consolidating reporting tools, data mapping, process monitoring and connectivity through GRC to the REGIS-TR trade repository.

News Analysis: EMIR, MiFIR, Dodd-Frank & The New Regulatory Environment

The new GRC compliance solution is one of many such offerings now being launched in readiness for the new post-crash regulatory environment that is being introduced in Europe via EMIR and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR), and in the US via Dodd-Frank - all in order to meet the wishes of the post-crash Pittsburgh G20 meeting back in 2009 for a centralised trading repository, centralised clearing, common legal entity identifiers (LEIs) and enhanced transparency. The idea behind a centralised repository is to make it easier to unwind trades in the event of another collapse such as Lehman Brothers.

According to Hirander Misra, chief executive officer (CEO) of GMEX Group and the co-founder of its GRC subsidiary: "Corporate and buy-side firms will be able to meet the [EMIR] mandatory regulatory reporting deadline easily by accessing our centralised solution for over-the-counter (OTC) and listed derivative transactions. The solution is connected to [and powered by] the REGIS-TR trade repository."

Commenting on the contract award, Nicolas Boatwright, managing director of the REGIS-TR, said he was delighted that GRC had chosen to partner with them to deliver the trade reporting service to its customer base. "Our approach emphasises simplicity, accessibility and predictability," he said. "We also think having flexible participant profiles, which allow any entity to participate directly and/or delegate to a third party, is a significant customer benefit."

GRC and REGIS-TR are currently on-boarding market participants to ensure early compliance with the EMIR reporting obligations, ahead of the 12 February 2014 deadline. REGIS-TR currently has 1,000 participants on its test environment, comprising of a wide variety of Pan-European financial institutions, as well as non-financial entities across all corporate sectors. It is in competition with the other TRs approved by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) such as the UK-based ICE Trade Vault Europe Ltd (ICE TVEL) and CME Trade Repository (CME TR), which obtained registration after the Regis-TR Iberclear/Clearstream joint venture; London Stock Exchange (LSE) UnaVista platform; Poland's KDPW and the Depository Trust and Clearing Company (DTCC) repository. The battle to win volume flow to these new platforms is now well and truly underway.