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The bulk of share trading in the European Union takes place on exchanges with relatively little inside banks, an industry body said on Tuesday in a bid to stop what it called bourses seeking to "perpetuate their dominance".
The EU is reviewing its stock and bond trading rules, known as MiFID II, triggering a battle between exchanges and their top customers, the banks and large asset managers, over competition.
The EU's securities watchdog ESMA has estimated that nearly half of trading is off an exchange, prompting bourses to call for this part of the market to face tougher curbs so that more trading goes onto 'lit' venues like the main exchanges.
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But the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), which represents wholesale market participants like banks and investment firms, said a report it commissioned from consultancy Oxera shows that 83% of share trading is on fully transparent venues like exchanges, with only 17% inside banks or other off-exchange platforms.
Oxera said it stripped out "technical trades", which represent a significant part of off-exchange trading but do not determine prices generally, to give a true picture of underlying activity.