Today I receive this information from my broker:
“Presently, the settlement period of stock exchange transactions across European venues is: trade date + 3 business days (T+3), except for German, Slovenian and Bulgarian markets, where the settlement period is T+2.
Effective October 6th 2014, the following countries will change to T+2, which will have an impact on transparency and efficacy of the markets:
Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.”
Are you missing some country?
The communiqué goes on: “The Spanish authorities have announced fixed income securities will migrate to T+2 effective October 6th; however equities are not expected to migrate until the fourth quarter 2015.”
That’s my country! Always leading Europe when it comes to hindering market transparency and lending a hand to the banks at the expense of the investors. I was about to call it a banana republic, but… can’t compare! This is much worse.