Last week’s International Futures Industry Conference in Boca Raton, Fla., featured luminaries from all aspects of the futures industry. The speeches and panel discussions included witty and insightful comments from regulators and industry executives. Here’s a handful of highlights.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler on the London Interbank Offered Rate investigation: “[Libor] has been readily and pervasively rigged. At each bank, the misconduct spanned many years, several cities, numerous employees including senior management, multiple benchmarks and currencies, and there was clear evidence of collusion. … We should not think of any benchmark as too big to replace.”
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing CEO Charles Li on regulatory reform: “From an Asian perspective, we are the innocent bystanders of a major traffic crash. … We are talking about medicines that are going to cure all these problems, and we are not part of the cause. Now we end up having to eat some of the medicines that are being prescribed. We are being told that if we take the medicine, we will not have this sort of crash, but we don’t really believe that.”
Singapore Exchange CEO Magnus Bocker on growth: “Sometimes, the challenge is not to find the growth; sometimes it’s just to find the right staff, the right technology and the right partnerships.”
Eurex Group CEO Andreas Preuss on India’s potential: “India has huge potential and will develop its trading and clearing environment and the usage of financial derivatives very substantially in the years to come. At what pace? I think we are going to find out.”
Nasdaq OMX Group CEO Robert Greifeld on growth: “All of our businesses generate a lot of cash. We have to make sure we don’t spend that cash on the blind pursuit of growth.”
The funniest line of the week came from CME Group CEO Phupinder Gill, who shared his views on relationship building in China: “Relationship building is important … I never imagined in my life that drinking and getting drunk would be a good thing. And we have been doing a lot of that.”