Stephane Janin (Past Speaker)

Stephane heads up AXA Investment Manager’s global regulatory development directorate and internal network globally. Recently he has been working on various projects including implementaion of MiF, PRIIPs, EMIR etc. as well as the adaptation of AXA IM to the potential Brexit context. Regarding Brexit, Stephane was able to dissociate the negotiations at regulators’ level from the negotiations at UK and continental politicians’ level – from that perspective he secured thier remaining risks through EU agreements at regulators’ level on derivatives in particular. Regarding CBDF, he was able to get some EU decisions following thier firm’s objectives. Regarding the forthcoming MiFID Review, he spotted the issue of cost and access to market data for the buy-side, that EU regulators and institutions have progressively become aware of. The most challenging part was on Brexit, as regulators are structurally used to follow what politicians decide, while here they  asked them to manage the practical issues whatever the final timeline and content of a political agreement would be. The key remaining challenge for Stephane, and for the buy-side more generally, is to avoid the further intrusion of banking supervisors in the field of securities and asset management regulation. There is still some lack of awareness from central banks on how asset managers work as compared to banks, and so some education efforts are still ahead of us. Indeed, the key overall challenge for us is to preserve in general the international competitiveness of European asset managers.