EuroCTP wins again, Fanatics teams up with BGC, Clarity Act’s uncertain future, and more

In Jimothy We Trust. And now for the news… 

Announced this week

EuroCTP authorized to operate Europe’s first CT for shares and ETFs

EuroCTP has been granted authorization by the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) as the consolidated tape provider for shares and exchange-traded funds across the European Union.

With regulatory authorization secured, EuroCTP has set the go-live date for Monday, September 14, 2026.

Market participant onboarding and technical readiness have progressed in parallel with the authorization process since the start of the year. Connectivity has already been established across 130 data sources spanning regulated markets, MTFs and APAs. Once live, the tape will operate on a non-discriminatory, fair and reasonable basis under Esma’s ongoing supervision.

S&P Global introduces expanded private markets datasets

S&P Global has launched With Intelligence’s data and insights into its flagship S&P Capital IQ Pro platform. This expansion follows S&P Global’s 2025 acquisition of With Intelligence, a data provider for the wealth and alternatives business, offering direct-from-investor allocation data, proprietary benchmarking and one of the largest databases of alternative fund managers.

S&P Capital IQ Pro users can now track the complete investment journey within a single platform, from identifying fundraising trends and analyzing investor commitments to evaluating fund performance and targeting the right investors, helping them move from insight to action with speed and confidence while reducing fragmented workflows and the need for multiple data sources.

As part of this initial launch, the enhanced S&P Capital IQ Pro platform now provides users with enhanced visibility and analysis of investors, improved insights into fund managers and comprehensive fund data and advanced screening capabilities.

OneChronos launches European trading venues

OneChronos has announced the production launch of its European trading venues, OneChronos Markets UK Limited and OneChronos Markets NL B.V., providing institutional investors with access to pan-European equities and equity-like instruments through a fundamentally different approach to market design and best execution.

The launch represents the next milestone in OneChronos’s international growth strategy, extending its market model into Europe through fully authorized UK and EU multilateral trading facilities. The venues provide institutional investors, brokers and liquidity providers with an additional destination for trading pan-European equities and equity-like securities, supporting increasingly sophisticated best execution objectives.

Full production trading begins with a strong pipeline of day one subscribers already connected and prepared to participate, representing leading global investment banks, agency brokers and institutional trading firms. Additional participants are expected to onboard throughout the coming months as liquidity continues to develop across the two venues.

Rothera deploys Eventus’s Validus for trade surveillance of event contract exchange

Rothera, a US-based CFTC-regulated event contract market, has deployed and implemented Eventus’s Validus platform for trade surveillance of its fast-growing markets.

Rothera picked Validus to utilize its customizable features and interface to provide the scalability and accountability needed to manage both fully collateralized and margined products. Eventus’s Frank AI solution also represents a new tool for Rothera to integrate AI coding and algorithms into surveillance.

Rothera is recognized by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization. Earlier this year, the firm obtained regulatory approval to launch its events contracts platform, introducing its first two products on May 21. Since introducing contracts on the World Cup, volume had reached 3.5 billion traded contracts as of mid-July.

LemonEdge announces $21m Series A funding round

LemonEdge, a fund accounting platform built for private markets, has completed a $21 million Series A investment round to accelerate product development and continued expansion in the US and Europe.

Blackstone Innovations Investments, Blackstone’s early-stage investment arm, led the funding round. It is joined by BNY with participation from long-time investor Sidekick Partners, bringing LemonEdge’s total funding raised to date to more than $30 million.

LemonEdge has also strengthened its senior leadership team by appointing New York-based David T O’Malley as chief executive officer and board chair. O’Malley brings extensive experience scaling global software-as-a-service and enterprise fintech businesses. Most recently, he served as president of Numerated Growth Technology, leading international expansion, operational and commercial strategy and ultimately orchestrating its sale to Moody’s Analytics.

CME Group introduces first futures on sports indexes

CME Group and FutureSports, a new independent index administrator transforming professional and college sports statistics into rules-based, benchmark financial indexes, have announced a long-term partnership allowing CME Group to list futures and options on FutureSports performance indexes (FSPI).

Based on FutureSports’ transparent methodology and officially reported, league-approved statistical outcomes, the contracts will provide new hedging and risk transfer capabilities for the sports ecosystem and a variety of new trading opportunities for institutions and individuals. The first monthly and quarterly cash-settled FSPI futures will begin trading this summer, pending regulatory review.

The indexes are administered by FutureSports, with methodologies designed to align with the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ principles for financial benchmarks and supported by published governance, oversight and methodology change procedures. The leagues serve as official data sources and do not participate in index determination or governance.

Fanatics acquires exchange and clearing house from BGC

Global sports platform Fanatics and BGC Group have entered into an agreement for Fanatics to acquire Water Street Labs, LLC and CX Clearinghouse L.P. from BGC. The acquisition of Water Street Labs, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-registered designated contract market, and CX Clearinghouse, L.P., a CFTC registered derivatives clearing organization, will enable Fanatics to offer its own federally regulated prediction market exchange and expand its prediction market offerings on Fanatics Markets.

By owning its own exchange and clearing house, Fanatics Markets will combine its expertise in building and scaling consumer-facing platforms with the ability to directly list and clear prediction markets. With BGC’s institutional market infrastructure, liquidity, and trading, Fanatics Markets aims to connect retail-focused prediction markets with the institutional marketplace for the first time.

In addition, Fanatics and BGC will partner to deliver new market data in this growing asset class with BGC contributing its established market data and analytics capabilities to enable the development of new client data products that combine prediction market sentiment with traditional financial market data.

What you might have missed from us

The Clarity Act enters the Last Chance Saloon

Digital asset legislation may sound easy to pass, but the Clarity Act is proving otherwise. Currently 616 pages long, the bill aims to establish a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for digital assets, primarily by settling the long-running turf war between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission over which agency oversees which crypto assets. Eliot breaks down the challenges it is currently facing.

The danger of prediction markets is precisely how useful they are

As prediction markets continue to attract attention, particularly in institutional circles, Max examines what use cases might form from their data. With Kalshi, in particular, bringing in more institutional players to round out its team, could the platform have an edge in figuring out how to play properly in the institutional space?

Bloomberg acquires Canoe Intelligence, expanding private markets prowess

Bloomberg announced a deal for Canoe Intelligence this week that aims to expand its private markets offering for clients, both in data and workflows. The ultimate goal for the data provider is to build something that mirrors what they are known for providing in the public space.

EDMA begins rollout of AI certification framework

The EDM Association is expanding the Cloud Data Management Capabilities assessment it put out five years ago to include artificial intelligence. Jim Halcomb, chief research and development officer at EDMA, says the group started looking at analytic assets soon after the release of ChatGPT and realized that some of the controls in CDMC applied to AI as well.

LSEG caps free prompts as it moves to increase AI revenues

The London Stock Exchange will introduce limits on how much of its AI functionality customers can use for free, CEO David Schwimmer announced during the exchange’s H1 call. One tool in particular, AI-powered search in the Workspace terminal, has reached 17,000 active users following its general launch at the beginning of July.

ICE buys MarketAxess to create ‘common rails’ for fixed income

Bloomberg aren’t the only ones cashing in this week. Intercontinental Exchange announced that it would purchase MarketAxess for $5.7 billion, potentially creating a new fixed income powerhouse. ICE chief executive Jeff Sprecher said during the company’s Q2 earnings call that conversations had taken place on and off for the past decade between himself and MarketAxess leadership about a possible merger. “It just feels like the right time,” he said.

In other news

44 states are aligned on one thing in their fight against prediction markets. It’s about sports wagering, CNBC

I find prediction markets fascinating, mainly for the cultural ripples they have created. I also don’t use any of the platforms and abhor sports gambling as a die-hard sports fan. On the recommendation of a fellow reporter, I recently read Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling by Danny Funt, which increased my loathing.

So yes, I think prediction markets are a form of gambling and I’m not alone in that belief. Earlier this week, 44 state attorneys general sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission expressing their opinion that the sports-related contracts on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket look too much like sports betting. That throws a wrench in the CFTC’s grand plans for prediction markets, which it argues are swaps. Sports gambling is regulated state by state, and currently only 39 states plus Washington DC have legalized it.

Now, you might be wondering, wait, only 44 states? Who didn’t sign? The answer is Texas, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Strange bedfellows, I know, but one thing is increasingly clear: The United States is not united on this issue. But, really, are we ever?