Europe’s senior post-trade practitioners have called on regulators to provide guidelines to help accelerate moves towards links and competition between clearing houses, in a bid to reduce costs of trading in the region.

Exchanges, regulators and market infrastructure bodies committed to setting up links, or interoperability, between clearing houses in a November 2007 code of conduct. The agreement was in part an effort to help bring European post-trade costs in line with those in the US, which are believed to be up to five times lower.