…A European Commission study, managed by consultancy Market Structure Partners, was published in September and found that the greatest impediments to the development of a consolidated tape were:

• The need to consolidate underlying data which is residing across many competing commercial entities, some with disproportionate economic leverage and conflicts of interest.
• The lack of body to mandate conformance to a single set of technical operating standards for data generators and aggregators.
• The lack of a single body to enforce standards and penalise poor behaviour, particularly to resolve data issues in real time, due to national competent authorities being responsible for European enforcement.

The paper recommended that Europe drive progress forward by creating a single, exclusive, consolidated tape provider to be run as an industry utility, governed by a broad set of data stakeholders and empowered by ESMA, to set and enforce market-wide standards and pricing of consolidated data. …