On 1 June 2018, the FICC Markets Standards Board published a transparency draft of a new statement of good practice on information and confidentiality for fixed income and commodities markets. The statement of good practice seeks to bring clarity to the issue of sharing information in the fixed income and commodities markets and dealing with confidential information within a firm.

There are nine good practice statements which firms should look to when considering their own practice in this area and cover issues including:

• market participants should clearly identify and appropriately limit access to confidential information;
• market participants should not disclose confidential information within their firms except to those persons who have a valid reason for receiving such information;
• issues pertaining to the sharing of confidential information with parties outside of the firm; and
• what can and cannot be discussed when discussing “Market Colour”.

The document states that Market Colour relating to high-level, non-specific market activity can be freely shared when provided in general terms, sufficiently aggregated and anonymised, such that client confidential information cannot be “reverse engineered” from it.