It has been a long and arduous summer in the City for much of Europe’s trading community. In May, a mammoth 800-page consultation paper caused a collective sigh of despair among the regulatory and public affairs teams of banks, brokers, exchanges, technology vendors and other practitioners.

The subject of the document was the second version of the Europe's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. Its goal: nothing less than defining the future of markets and trading in the world's largest economic bloc.