[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), an independent body that regulates the financial services industry in the United Kingdom, today announced that the FCA has officially gone live with NASDAQ OMX‘s SMARTS Integrity market surveillance platform to enhance its monitoring of transaction reports across the UK’s financial markets.

SMARTS Integrity provides the FCA with a surveillance platform for the detection of market abuse across financial instruments admitted to trading on regulated or prescribed markets including any underlying derivatives. The FCA is leveraging the scalable and extensible NASDAQ OMX platform to enhance its coverage of current and future European legislation such as the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) and Market Abuse Regulation (MAR). (NASDAQ OMX was originally selected in September 2012.)

“We are committed to providing the FCA with the most powerful surveillance technology in the industry to detect market abuse in a constantly changing marketplace,” said Paul McKeown, Vice President. “The implementation project went smoothly with all target dates and requirements met. We are very proud of our partnership with the FCA as we continue to grow our footprint in the regulatory environment in Europe and beyond. We look forward to developing this partnership in the future.”

SMARTS surveillance solutions operate in 50 market venues and regulators, and more than 70 market participants across 55 markets.