Director of European Affairs, ICAP ● Brussels ● Securities Lending Legend ●
After nearly 20 years at Fortis, he became ICAP’s director of European affairs in January 2006. ICAP, the inter-dealer broker, gained a veritable repo celebrity, and de Vidts has been able to remain on the market’s front lines with a cutting-edge firm while still remaining engaged with regulators and industry bodies.
He chairs the International Capital Markets Association’s European Repo Council and is active at the Clearing and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring Experts’ Group (CeSAME) and the Code of Conduct Monitoring Group at the European Commission and the Contact Group on Euro Securities Infrastructures (CoGESI) at the European Central Bank.
His long background in repo makes him an ideal voice for the industry. For all his evangelizing, though, perhaps it is no surprise that he laments how much work there still is to be done. “Though we have been educating people for many years,” he says, “there are a very limited number of people who really understand the products in full.” With any luck, an ambassador like de Vidts may yet bring people around.