MiFID U-Turn Sets Up Game of Chicken Over Charging for Research

A quiet standoff is developing among asset managers in Europe that threatens to frustrate an effort to make the region’s struggling markets more competitive.

More than seven years after MiFID II legislation forced money managers to separate the cost of research from that of trading — a move thought to have badly undermined equity coverage — regulators in both the European Union and UK are in the process of walking the measures back. But firms so far show few signs of embracing this so-called rebundling.

The problem? Rather than start billing their clients for research back in 2018 when ...