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The FCA just made its Secondary Markets Advisory Committee bigger. The regulator expanded the group to 27 members for the two-year term running July 2026 to July 2028 — a move that pulls in fresh voices from equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, and commodities markets.
The committee’s job is pretty much what it sounds like: help the FCA keep tabs on wholesale secondary markets, push market reforms, and flag risks before they become real problems. Jon Relleen chairs it, backed by the FCA’s Trading Policy team. The body was first set up in 2022, with each term capped at two years. So this is the third cycle, and it’s the biggest one yet.
The expansion goes from 25 to 27 members.
Who’s Sitting at the Table
The member list is dense, and it’s worth going through because the names tell you a lot about where the FCA is pulling its intelligence from. Jamie Turner comes from the London Metal Exchange. Gary Chia-Hsing Li is from MarketAxess. Laurence Walton represents ICE Futures Europe. Laetitia Visconti sits from Aquis Exchange Ltd, and Simon McQuoid Mason comes from the London Stock Exchange Group.
That’s just the first wave. Jennifer Keser from Tradeweb and Nick Dutton from CBOE Europe Ltd bring experience in regulation and market structure — two things the FCA needs badly as trading venues grow more complex and more interconnected. Their presence probably helps the committee stay current on what’s actually happening at the infrastructure level, not just what looks good in a policy document.
And then there’s the big-bank contingent. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Securities Plc, and Goldman Sachs International all have seats. Maria Salamanca Mejia from Morgan Stanley and Kate Finlayson from J.P. Morgan Securities Plc focus on market structure and liquidity strategies. Eleanor Beasley from Goldman Sachs International covers equity and fixed income markets with a global lens. That kind of international perspective matters for a regulator trying to keep the UK market competitive post-Brexit, when every comparative disadvantage gets scrutinized.
Buy-side representation isn’t thin either.
Adam Conn from Baillie Gifford Overseas Ltd and Alexandre Roubaud from Blackrock UK both contribute knowledge in trading and exchange-traded funds. Christos Nifadopoulos from Rokos Capital Management LLP handles legal affairs. Frances Ritter from Vanguard Asset Management brings equity portfolio management experience. It’s a solid mix of the kind of practitioners who actually move money through these markets every day, not just people who study them.
Electronic Trading, Risk, and What the FCA Wants Fixed
Avery Later from BNY CIO and Michael Kucharski from Barclays Bank Plc both focus on electronic trading and risk management. That’s a pairing the FCA clearly wants on this committee. Technology in trading has moved fast — algorithmic execution, fragmented liquidity pools, latency arbitrage — and the regulatory frameworks haven’t always kept pace. Having practitioners who live inside those systems gives the committee a more grounded read on where the real risks sit.
Dean Shoosmith from Marex and Carla Grundy from TP ICAP round out the risk management and trading venue side. Both bring insights into market infrastructure, which is basically the plumbing that makes secondary markets function. When that plumbing has problems, it tends to show up in ways regulators didn’t anticipate.
Mario Muth from Deutsche Bank AG adds another global fixed income and equity perspective. Arran Rowsell from BGC and Peter Whitaker from Jane Street Financial contribute strategic market analysis and European market structure expertise. Jane Street, in particular, has become one of the most significant market makers in fixed income and ETFs globally, so Whitaker’s involvement probably gives the committee a sharper view of how liquidity actually gets provided in stressed conditions.
The FCA says the committee is tasked with identifying changes and risks that could affect secondary markets, and providing data and analysis to support policy reforms. That’s a broad mandate. It basically means the 27 members need to collectively cover enough ground that the FCA doesn’t get caught flat-footed by a market structure shift it didn’t see coming.
Whether a 27-person committee can move fast enough to do that is unclear. Advisory bodies tend to work on longer cycles than markets do. But the diversity here — buy-side, sell-side, trading venues, global banks, specialist firms — at least gives the FCA more raw material to work with than a smaller, more homogeneous group would.
The committee’s term runs through July 2028.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many members does the FCA Secondary Markets Advisory Committee now have?
The committee expanded to 27 members for the July 2026 to July 2028 term, up from 25 in the previous cycle.
Who chairs the FCA Secondary Markets Advisory Committee?
Jon Relleen chairs the committee, with support from the FCA’s Trading Policy team.
