Opening remarks of Walt Lukken, President and CEO of FIA, at the 2026 FIA International Derivatives Expo in London. As prepared for delivery.
Good morning, everyone – and welcome to IDX. It is great to be in London among friends.
This year, IDX coincides with the world's greatest sporting event, the World Cup. Importantly, we will be showing the England and Croatia match during our IDX Gala on Wednesday to ensure you don’t miss a minute of the action.
As an American, I am proud and excited that North America is hosting the World Cup this year. In fact, this weekend I am taking my kids to Kansas City to watch Ecuador take on Curacao.
We Americans are finally joining the rest of the world in the passions and traditions surrounding the beautiful game. Like scarf wearing in the summer, guzzling pints of beer at halftime, and singing raunchy chants about your opponents...and their mothers. Thank you, UK football fans!
Now, I want to start by recognizing Mark Bortnik of Morgan Stanley and chair of FIA's European board.
As many of you know, the Kilt Challenge is one of the great traditions of this conference. Each year, we choose a prominent member of our industry to wear a kilt to the gala dinner and lead our efforts to raise funds for our industry charity – Futures for Kids.
In addition to wearing the kilt on Wednesday, Mark decided to take on another small feat for charity...the Three Peaks Challenge.
Now this challenge requires climbing the three highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales in less than 24 hours. That’s 23 miles of hiking and more than 10,000 feet of elevation.
Last month, Mark and 19 industry colleagues completed the challenge and raised more than 70,000 pounds – and counting – for Futures for Kids. That deserves real recognition. Please join me in giving Mark and the entire team a well-earned round of applause.
When I reflect on their journey, it strikes me that the challenge is more than a physical feat.
It’s a metaphor for what our industry faces right now.
Today’s changing markets require us to navigate steep climbs, rapid descents, uncertain terrain and volatile conditions. And the pace of this change isn't just fast, it's accelerating.
Mark and his colleagues must have felt doubt as they tackled their mountains, and you may also feel trepidation about the ever-changing world we live in.
Like Mark, we must lean in and take on these challenges as a team. As we gather here in London, our industry faces our own Three Peaks.
The first is the push toward 24/7 markets. The second is the pace of innovation. And the third is the state of European competitiveness.
Peak One
Let's start with 24/7.
None of us wants to lose our weekends, but it's clear that this is the direction of travel.
Crypto exchanges already trade continuously, and they are rapidly expanding into conventional markets.
Retail, especially young investors, have come to expect always-on markets in every aspect of their lives.
But let’s not bury the lead: continuous trading is the easy part. Clearing poses the greater challenge.
Our robust and resilient clearing system protects the integrity of our markets. And today, that system requires carefully choreographed margin collections that de-risk volatile markets.
Currently, this de-risking cannot occur over the weekend, since the wholesale payment systems and funding markets are closed.
This constrains our ability to manage the risks of around-the-clock trading.
A 24/7 market without 24/7 risk management is not progress. It’s a vulnerability.
So, as we climb this peak, we need to coordinate with exchanges, clearinghouses and regulators on risk controls and market protections.
We need to advance new technologies – like tokenized assets – that take friction out of the payment system.
And we need to advocate with central banks the need to modernize our existing payment rails.
These recommendations are contained in recently published FIA reports on 24/7 markets and tokenization, and we plan to outline additional best practices in the coming months that will offer a pragmatic path to the top of this peak.
If we engage as a community, we can reach this summit without jeopardizing our markets.
Peak Two
Now, if the first peak is about when our markets run, the second is about how fast they evolve.
Global investment in AI is now measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars and continues to grow.
Distributed ledger technology continues to drive new models of decentralized trading and settlement.
And Quantum computing holds the promise to unlock vast amounts of computational power for humanity.
These innovations are both breathtaking and frightening. How will markets keep up? Will traditional market structures become obsolete? We all feel this anxiety.
But I’m here to tell you, this is no time to shrink from the moment. History rewards those who enter the arena.
Our markets have always embraced innovation. It is in our nature. Futures and derivatives do not exist naturally in the wild; they are derived from the creative minds of entrepreneurs who put their ideas and capital behind these risk-management products.
But market innovation must be responsible.
Throughout time, we have heard how innovation has solved for the need for regulation in our markets – whether that’s Enron, Lehman or FTX.
Different eras. Different innovations. Same pattern of hubris and destruction.
We can be for innovation but also maintain healthy scepticism. In fact, the safety of our markets demands it.
FIA is approaching these innovations through first principles of sound markets.
We instinctively know these:
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Trust
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Fairness
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Integrity
For example, FIA has taken the position that DeFi systems that perform the functions of exchanges need to abide by the same regulatory rules and principles of traditional trading platforms.
While this technology may achieve these outcomes differently, it’s important that all markets, new or traditional, abide by these first principles of trust, fairness and integrity for the good of the system.
After all, innovation and safety are not opposing forces. In strong markets, they advance together.
With these well-tested principles as our guide, we can scale this mountain together with confidence.
Peak Three
Which brings me from how we innovate to where we compete.
In two public reports, respected leaders from the EU called out the competitiveness gap in Europe and set out strong recommendations for improving productivity and capital investment.
In response, EU policymakers have launched an ambitious agenda to encourage greater investment, reduce red tape and simplify the regulatory structure.
FIA recently shared its views on the EU’s Market Integration Supervision Package. We strongly support its goal of making European capital markets more integrated, resilient and competitive. But policymakers must ensure these reforms truly simplify supervision rather than add duplicative layers of complexity.
We need supervisory models that give EU CCPs a single point of interaction while preserving appropriate input from national authorities. We also believe ESMA should have flexible tools that enable innovation and a clear mandate to support competitiveness.
I remember when the US futures markets faced a competitiveness problem in the 1990s. At that point in our industry's history, the world’s largest derivatives exchange was not located in Chicago or Hong Kong. It was in Germany, where Eurex brought better technology and electronic trading to our markets.
So how did the US respond? In 2000, Congress enacted legislation that embraced a more principles-based approach to regulation, similar to the UK structure. That flexible framework helped unleash an era of truly remarkable growth and innovation in US markets.
I strongly believe a similar, more flexible approach will make the difference for Europe. At FIA, we are actively gathering views and offering suggestions to make the regulatory environment more attractive.
A strong and competitive Europe is good for markets and global growth. It’s good for global stability as well. Europe has the capital, talent and infrastructure for a world-class capital market.
The challenge is mobilising those strengths with a regulatory structure that evolves with the markets. It will take courage among EU policymakers, but I believe this summit is within reach.
Conclusion
Now, I know we will not accomplish our industry’s three peaks in 24 hours like Mark and team. But like Mark, we must overcome our doubts, develop a strategic pathway and tackle these industry mountains with determination and courage. I am confident that this industry, with its innovative spirit, can overcome these challenges.
