The Financial Conduct Authority has settled the design of a consolidated tape for UK shares and given itself 18 months to deliver it.
That commitment sits inside a wider package published by the regulator, which also opens a consultation on targeted market structure changes and switches on a stopgap reporting tool for equities in the meantime.
Investors trading UK shares have plenty of venues to choose from, and the FCA’s own read is that competition and innovation have paid off, leaving markets liquid and able to absorb shocks. The trade-off is fragmentation. Piecing together what has actually traded across the whole market takes effort and money, so a lot of market-wide data simply goes unused. One consequence, the regulator argues, is that the real depth of UK equity markets goes unrecognised.
A consolidated tape solves that by pulling trading information from across venues into one feed.
The FCA says it weighed a broad spread of opinion on market data, transparency and structure before landing on the final design, and that market users backed the direction of travel.
Watching for problems before they appear
The regulator’s position is that UK equity markets work as they should. Its caveat is that this is a complicated system, and systems change.
So the consultation asks a forward-looking question: which indicators should the FCA track to judge market quality, and what tools should be sitting on the shelf if a proportionate intervention is ever needed?
A stopgap while the tape is built
Eighteen months is a long wait, so the FCA has launched a market activity reporter for shares in the interim. It gives a daily view of overall UK equity trading, letting users see aggregate volumes before the full tape goes live.
Bonds went first
The equity work follows the UK bond consolidated tape, which launched in June 2026 and has since picked up more than 1.6 million licence subscriptions. Both sit within the FCA’s broader capital markets reform programme.
Simon Walls, executive director of markets at the FCA, said competition, innovation and the decisions taken by investors and companies had shaped the market into what it is, and that those remain sound foundations. Choice brings complexity, he acknowledged, though in his view complexity “needn’t mean a lack of transparency”.
A tape, Walls said, makes it simpler for investors to see the whole market at once. The package announced settles the significant design questions and commits the regulator to delivery inside 18 months.
