Opening Remarks at the April 2019 Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee Meeting

Thank you, Chairman Clayton. And thank you to all of the FIMSAC members for contributing your time today and during the sub-committee meetings and discussions up to this point. I also want to thank the SEC staff who support FIMSAC.

Despite several months having passed since our last meeting, the agenda today makes clear that you have remained focused and busy in the interim. I will keep my remarks brief today, so rather than address each of the topics on the agenda, I will simply highlight a few general themes that are important to me and that I think you will find relevant to the discussions today.

First, I am keenly interested in ways we can improve the transparency in all our markets, but especially for fixed income, where opacity still seems to be the norm, although I recognize that this is shifting.

Second, competition is very important to our markets and I am always eager to find ways to remove impediments that may discourage entry, participation and confidence.

Third, providing greater flexibility to market participants is something I am always open to considering, especially when doing so helps the markets and investors and avoids impractical results. That said, we must always be mindful of the potential unforeseen risks that even minor adjustments to existing rules and protections may cause.

Finally, our U.S. markets are interconnected, but as we all know, our markets are part of a larger, global financial ecosystem. I am encouraged that we have so many leaders and representatives of the markets in this room and that you are focused on how our domestic and global markets interact. This is especially true at a time when geopolitical and macroeconomic shifts are occurring, thus creating new financial and systemic risks and the need to understand and plan for contingencies to assure stability and continuity.

With that, I look forward to the discussions today. Again, thank you Chairman Clayton, FIMSAC members, and Commission staff.