BRUSSELS — The EU will draft new rules to tighten oversight of derivatives markets and set new fines for manipulating trades in complex financial instruments that some blame for worsening the financial crisis.
EU Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said Monday that regulators had to know more about derivatives and the investors behind them. He would demand all products and trading to be registered with trade depositories that regulators could access.
The $600 trillion sector is largely unregulated at present, with many trades taking place privately between investors. Derivatives are financial contracts that do not require a trader to own the underlying security or financial asset. They include swaps, options and more complex instruments. The Associated Press
