Dame Clara Furse may be gone but the former London Stock Exchange chief executive’s warning two years ago about the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive has an eerie resonance.

Furse said in June 2007: "You should be careful of what you wish for. The law of unintended consequences has a long and undistinguished history. The test for Mifid will be whether competition will increase liquidity and efficiency. The risk is that the benefits of competition for investors will be lost to the increase in fragmentation."