Unintended results of Europe's MiFID: job losses, trading turmoil?

London

WITH the start of Europe's MiFID II rules less than five months away, banks and asset managers are scrambling to prepare for a regulatory overhaul that risks doing more harm than good to the finance industry.

Aimed at making markets fairer and more transparent, the European Union's revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive impacts everything from how firms trade to how research is distributed. Yet practitioners are concerned that the hundreds of pages of rules conceal problems that regulators never fully considered.

"The bubble of MiFID II feels painful," said Gerard Walsh, who heads up equities business development for Northern Trust Se…