Consolidation revisited

As Burgundy now offers trading in Nordic small cap stocks, the lack of consolidated time and sales data to retail investors is more apparent than ever. Surprisingly few end investors seem to be aware that fragmentation in the Nordics is at record levels (40% of the market is now outside of the primary according to Fidessa), but traditional sources of price information such as newspapers, financial market websites and Teletext services are still pegged to the primary market. This is of course completely unacceptable and we have together with Aktietorget and the Swedish Shareholders' Association started a working group to lobby media and information vendors to find a pragmatic solution. Although the well-publicized MIFID review is now under way, we do not see why retail investors should wait for political action. Our sophisticated and active Nordic investor community is hungry for timely and correct share trading information now - not in two years time.