In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Richard Comotto, a specialist in repo, the multi-trillion dollar marketplace used by large financial institutions to borrow and lend money in the short term.

Richard, who started his career at the Bank of England, works for the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA), for whom he has authored the ICMA “Guide to Best Practice in the European Repo Market”, its website FAQs on repo and the semi-annual survey of the ICMA European repo market, which has been running since 2000.

He has also advised on the development of domestic money and repo markets for bodies such as the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

He is also co-founder and chief product officer at London Reporting House, a fintech providing data and analytics on the repo market.

In the podcast, we cover:

• What is the repo market?
• The role of repo in the bond markets
• Did repo help trigger the 2008 financial crisis?
• The difference between repo and a pledge
• The difference between repo and a securities loan
• Why repo has largely replaced unsecured wholesale lending
• When and how can repo go wrong?
• How do central banks use repo?
• Is quantitative tightening (QT) the reverse of quantitative easing (QE)?
• The effect of blockchain on the repo market
• How shorter settlement cycles affect repo
• Could central clearing trigger a repo market accident?