Director, Market Oversight (Equities)

At the FCA, we want to deepen trust in financial services and enable a fair and thriving financial services market for the good of consumers and the economy. We want to deepen trust, rebalance risk, support growth and improve lives.

Our strategic priorities are to be a smarter regulator, to support sustained economic growth, to help consumers navigate their financial lives and to fight financial crime.

Significant improvements in digital enablement, business intelligence, market data and information management maturity are all being pursued to maintain our position as a world leader in financial services regulation.

The Role

There are few jobs where you can make a real difference to the 2 million people who work in the UK Financial Services industry, the 40 million consumers of financial products and the stability of our economy as a whole. Our people are integral to our success as an organisation, working alongside industry, visiting firms and speaking to consumers and investors every day as we strive to ensure the FCA is setting the standard for other regulatory bodies across the world.

As part of our strategic focus on growth, we are seeking to enable investment, innovation and ensuring the continued competitiveness of the UK’s world-leading financial services. Strengthening the UK’s position in wholesale markets is key to this. And as part of our strategic focus on financial crime, we seek to maintain the UK’s high standards of market integrity. The UK occupies a pivotal position in global markets, being the second biggest global financial hub and first in the world for international debt issuance and foreign exchange trading. The FCA is committed to supporting UK market excellence and to maintaining the UK’s reputation for clean and transparent financial markets.

We have recently delivered an exciting programme of reform to UK public equity markets, with the biggest listing rule changes for decades, optionality for investment research, major shifts in prospectus rules and a new public offer regime. We are investing in the excellence of our primary equity markets in support of growth.

Our Market Oversight directorate covers the full range of UK primary and secondary market activity across equity, fixed income, currency and commodity markets. Its mission is to promote the conduct that supports trusted, orderly and efficient primary and secondary markets by promoting market standards and practices that balance the interests of all stakeholders; by exercising expert oversight in a proactive, constructive and proportionate manner; and by exposing and changing behaviours which threaten trust and confidence in our markets.

Given the breadth and diversity of the Market Oversight remit, we operate a co-director model to ensure that all products and activity receive the right level of oversight and attention with the right level of market-specific technical expertise. We are looking for a director with equity capital markets expertise to work closely and collaboratively alongside a co-director. The two directors share responsibility for the leadership of the directorate as a whole, with each having specific responsibility for specific functions within the directorate.

This exciting opportunity for a Director of Market Oversight entails overseeing the conduct of participants in the primary market through the listing, prospectus and disclosure regimes.  The FCA has always had a strong footprint as a regulator of equity markets, and this role entails the oversight of our Listings  function, the gateway to securing a UK listing, as well as our Primary Markets Oversight function, ensuring issuers keep the markets promptly informed of developments while also horizon scanning and focusing on sponsor conduct in a fast moving market environment.

Building the capital markets capability of the UK, finding the right balance between risk and growth and growing the digital capability of the teams are all critical aspects of this important role. This will require UK equity capital market expertise and strong leadership skills as we build out our teams and capabilities.

The Director will have specific responsibility for Listings and Primary Market Oversight. The Director will also work collaboratively with industry and across the FCA, will engage closely with other UK agencies and will operate at international level to increase the sharing of data and insights and scale up cross-agency and cross-border co-ordination.

This is a unique opportunity to feed directly into the FCA’s work to strengthen UK wholesale markets at a critical time.