The Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) just announced that it has officially extended its contract with Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) to continue to leverage Nasdaq’s SMARTS Market Surveillance technology to detect insider trading and market manipulation across the European Union’s wholesale energy markets by digesting and analyzing massive volumes of data from hundreds of power producers, exchanges, operators, and brokers across 28 member states. The new agreement contract extension will continue to allow national regulatory authorities to share data, technology, and expertise, with the aim of creating a cooperative regulatory infrastructure.
Under the contract, SMARTS technology will continue being leveraged to monitor the European wholesale gas and electricity markets, covering both spot trading and derivative markets across Europe in accordance with the obligations under the REMIT legislation. Further, the surveillance technology will support ACER’s efforts in ensuring prices set on wholesale energy markets reflect fair and competitive interplay between supply and demand, with the goal to stifle any profits gained from market abuse.
As a truly pan-European development, the partnership allows National Regulatory Authorities to directly leverage the data and technology. The platform is designed in a manner that allows easy sharing of data for investigations across the European Union and for the national regulators to pool their knowledge to fine tune detection algorithms. Several national regulators have already signed up to be part of the technology partnership with the objective of creating a cooperative technology framework for energy market monitoring.
We are proud of our partnership with ACER and its key role in strengthening the integrity and transparency of the EU energy markets,” said Tony Sio, Head of Marketplace & Regulator Surveillance, Market Technology, Nasdaq. “The platform centrally monitors huge volumes of activity across Europe and is designed to foster collaboration across the different national regulators. A cooperative pan-European approach to surveillance ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.
Proven at over 50 marketplaces and regulators, and more than 140 market participants worldwide, Nasdaq’s SMARTS Surveillance technology is the industry benchmark for real-time and T1 solutions for market surveillance, supervision and compliance.