The REGIS-TR RoundUp
The REGIS-TR RoundUp is a hub for regulatory reporting news and views from your leading Trade Repository team and industry guests from across the globe.
The REGIS-TR RoundUp
S10:E9 Refit Update & 2024 Review - Live in Madrid (Part 01)
In this special, recorded live at our #REGISTR Annual Client Event at the Madrid Stock Exchange, we interview senior industry leaders about the successes and challenges of 2024, one of the hardest for the derivatives industry as they implemented the far-reaching changes of EMIR Refit, and faced a tsunami of global rewrites. Featuring insights and analysis from:
👤MarĂa Santos, Managing Director, REGIS-TR, SIX
👤Alfonso Alcalá, Chief Operating Officer, REGIS-TR, SIX
👤Silvia Morales, Head Product Management, REGIS-TR, SIX
👤Tim Hartley, Director - EMIR Reporting, Kaizen
👤Felicity Howley, Product Owner Regulatory Reporting, ABN AMRO CLEARING
👤John Kernan, Head, REGIS-TR UK, SIX
👤David Retana, Managing Director, REGIS-TR UK, SIX
Plus, lots of conference banter, behind-the-scenes chat and general buzz from a hugely successful event at the magnificent Palacio de la Bolsa in Madrid. We also hope to close the debate on the famous "Spanish chorizo"... is it a sausage? Bets are open!
this podcast is brought to you by register, which is a member of the six group and features members of the register team and special guests expressing their personal opinions, not the opinions of register as an organization. There is no representation made as to the accuracy or completeness of information in this podcast, and nor should it be taken as legal tax or any other professional advice. Hello and welcome back to the registry on roundup podcast, and we have a very special show for you. In fact, we have two shows. Yes, it's time for our annual two-parter from the registry client event. The last one, you remember, of course, was recorded live on location in London, and this one, for me, was even better because I got to go abroad. Yes, finally, I got out of the virtual studio and into the real world, to the Palacio de la Bolsa, the Madrid Stock Exchange, a magnificent historical building in the centre of Madrid, where I caught up with the great and the good of the world of trade repositories, with key leaders from Registr and with clients and with everyone who was having a good time at the November client event on the 26th.
Speaker 1:It was, of course, a challenging year, 2024. We'll be hearing more about that and how EMEA has been implemented the biggest change in the world of derivatives reporting pretty much since it started, I think it's fair to say. But we're also going to be looking at some of the bigger issues that are going to be shaping 2025 and beyond. There's a new administration in the US which looks like it could be pretty deregulatory in its approach. Will that have implications for Europe?
Speaker 1:We're also talking about the big changes within the EU, with DORA coming into effect in January and, of course, touching on some of those regimes which may not apply to the trade repository world right now but will certainly affect market participants. Looking at potential rewrites for SFTR, for changes to MIFID and lots of other juicy stuff as well. So we begin the day before on the 25th of November, where I caught up with the man who was really in the hot seat pulling all of this together and hosting the day, the new producer of the show as well. I'm very glad to introduce Manuel Moreno Garcia and I managed to grab him during rehearsals to get a view of, you know, what was coming up and how things were going up and how things were going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so excited to be prepared for the big day tomorrow. As you said, we are in a very, really nice place and we are going to hold a very fantastic event. We prepare a really exciting agenda for the whole day tomorrow, with roundtables, with presentations and a nice debate, so let's hope that tomorrow everything will go well.
Speaker 1:Now you look very calm and relaxed. Your hair is perfect, I've got to say. There isn't a hair out of place. It doesn't look as though you've been running around like a wild man pulling all this stuff together. You and the team seem to be very, very calm. You think you're confident this is going. The team seem to be very, very calm. You think you're confident this is going to go well.
Speaker 3:Of course. Of course We've worked really hard to make it happen and everything is under control. So we have to keep everything under control and all the nerves and all these things that makes you really nervous you have to control when you are also on the stage. So, yeah, everything will go well for sure, I think everything is going to go well.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, that's it from the pre-show. Let's get on with the main event. Manuel moreno garcia there, who is, of course, the show producer and was mc and did a great job too. I'm not just saying that because he's the producer. He really did do a great job fronting the show on the 26th. So let's dive in with recordings live from the event and we begin by catching up with various senior leaders from Regis CR to talk about 2024 and EMEA refit and how that implementation went, not just for the trade repository, of course, but for market participants and the industry as a whole. Joining me is Maria Santos, who's the Managing Director at Registrio, who took over the event to close it today, as well as being on a panel earlier. Maria, you've had another huge success. These client days are great, tell us. You must feel very proud of the team.
Speaker 4:I'm so proud of all the clients here joining us and so happy for the team and so proud also for the team. Everybody was so participating and there were so many questions and and so many diverse subjects. Um what that? I think it was a quite a useful journey for for all of us and, as I said, my impression is that we really needed to share our experience during this, this difficult, you know um, process we went through with the implementation of Refit in EU and UK and, this being all together, sharing our experience on the authority side, on the client side, on the trade repository side and on the collaborator side, I think it's been very useful for all of us. I think the big challenge now is to have state-of-the-art tools to get as much advantage as possible of the huge amount of data that we are all creating and, you know, to make this data useful and to make all this effort we all went through very useful to get more information on how the entities are performing, about the stability of the financial system, etc.
Speaker 1:so I think it's very part the data is is to have the superpower, but you have also to have the correct tools and and and to to elaborate a final result as someone who hasn't been on the show before is Alfonso Alcala, and I managed to grab him away from a very busy lunch reception to ask him how the technical challenges had shaken out for the trade repository over the last year. Alfonso, I mean, it's been a long year, it's been a tough year, but huge progress has been made. Sum up 2024 for us.
Speaker 5:Yes, it has been a very demanding, challenging year. I have shared with all the audience today and also for your audience of the podcast. I would like to share, thank you, and to communicate to all the people that are listening that, OK, the good message is we have built a very good platform, not only to cope with the implementation of the refit, but to be prepared for the future, and the future is for our customers. Now, after fulfilling the regulatory obligations, what we are going to do is to create value-added services for the clients and to make how to say, digestible All the information. All the data that is collected due to the new REFIT implementation will be transformed into something digestible. So transform data into information is our purpose, and to make life easier for our clients.
Speaker 1:So, on that front, what's life going to look like in 2025? We've had a huge amount of work to do in 2024. Everyone's hoping things will calm down. There'll be a period of consolidation, but I guess not on the chief operation officer's front, because you've got DORA coming in and then there are multiple regulatory rights potentially on the cards, with MIFID and SFTR 2.0, the rest of EMEA 3.0. I mean, it seems like you're going to be pretty busy.
Speaker 5:Always. You know it's something that is substantial to be the operational officer. So we, okay, obviously we need to monitor the system to adapt to the requirements, but I am absolutely confident that now we have a very powerful tool that is our current platform. So, yes, a lot of work to be done, new regulatory changes, but we, our role is to work for the regulation and to make this regulation easy for our clients. So the good news is OK, we are not going to have some street hard milestone, as we have had for refit implementation in EU and UK, with only five months between the two implementations, with the summer in between. So something is very challenging.
Speaker 5:And the data migration. So now obviously we need to do work, we need to consolidate, we need to create value added, but it's something that we are not frightened. Ok, we are pretty sure that we will do. Ok, we are pretty sure that we will do, but in a war, in a better how to say, in a better pace. It's not to rush to take this milestone. So, for me, challenging, but more we observe the next year with a more positive view.
Speaker 1:Alfonso Alcala, chief Operating Officer of Registriar. Thank you.
Speaker 5:Thank you, thank you for all your audience. Thank you, chief Operating Officer of Regicear. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for all your audience.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Okay, well, we're coming to the end of the Well, it's been a fantastic day and everyone is heading to the airport, including this lady who I've stopped. Please don't miss your flight. Sylvia Evora, you know her as one of the leads in the tech team and the lead of product management. Sylvia, it's great to have you here. You've had a long year, but you've now got a fantastic new platform. We heard from Alfonso earlier. You've now got a product layer on top of that, which is really state of the art. Does this mean you finally get to have a holiday? Absolutely.
Speaker 6:So hopefully we will get the holiday Now we are starting, so the worst part of the year that ended. So we are now in a much better situation. We are much stable, but we are not going to stop. And we are not going to stop because we want more. We want to start looking into data quality. We are going to start looking into providing better statistics to our clients. So it's now the time to stop focusing on meeting the requirements and starting to focus on clients.
Speaker 1:Okay, so 2025, big client focus. We've heard a lot of talk about ancillary services and value adds. Is there anything in the product pipeline you can tell me about? That isn't going to. You know it's going to be a little scooped for the podcast, can tell me about.
Speaker 6:That isn't going to. You know, it's going to be a little scooped for the podcast. I mean, the main focus is going to be how can we improve in identifying data quality issues and that we can help identifying our clients those as well, so that they can resolve them way before their NCAs come to them and ask for details. So we are going to work on that direction to identify the quality issues and help them identify those so that they are resolved.
Speaker 1:Silvia Evora. Thank you so much. It's great to see you.
Speaker 6:Likewise. Thank you very much Okay, bye.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the great things about getting out of the virtual studio and attending a live event is, apart from the fact that things about getting out of the virtual studio and attending a live event is, apart from the fact that I finally changed out of my pajamas and put on some real outside clothes. I went and caught up with an old friend of the show, mr Tim Hartley, director of Regulatory Reporting at Kaizen, and I got his view on the broader industry. Take on, amir refit. We're just coming to the lunch break. That's why you can hear the subtle strains of jazz in the background in this magnificent building.
Speaker 1:And joining me here is, of course, someone who's basically, uh, the sort of lodger on the show. He's, uh, a guest co-star, uh many times. Mr tim harley, joining us from kaisen. Tim, it has been the full monty this morning. We seem to have covered off so many topics, but obviously, having you here, a genuine data expert, tell us I mean, you know how has Refit gone? We've had some very honest opinions here about this was always going to be a massive challenge for the industry.
Speaker 7:Yeah, there's been a lot, andrew, for firms to get in up to speed with.
Speaker 7:They've done a very good job of getting up to speed with the validation rules, which means their submissions have by and been successful after a couple of teeming issues. That's been a great story. And the collaboration between firms and the rest of the industry. So trade repositories such as Registr and trade associations they've all talked together very well very good working groups to see what the problems are, what the gray areas are and how to report under those situations, what the problems are, what the gray areas are and how to report under those situations, and so firms have risen to that challenge very, very well. There's still work to do on a day two level in terms of making sure that their data is fit for purpose, but that's fully to be expected. With the amount of changes that came in for a mere refit, there would always be a long tail of things to remediate and that's where firms are now. They've done a good job for submissions and they're ready to look to see how good that data is, how fit for purpose is the data that they've reported.
Speaker 1:One of the things that seems to have emerged is the fact that, prior to the go-live for a mere refit, there was a lot of testing that was being done with synthetic trade synthetic data. There was a lot of testing that was being done with synthetic trade, synthetic data, but what the process has shown is that actually, that wasn't really a good approximation for the real live operational data that is getting shunted through the system at massive volumes across the whole of the EU. Do you think this has changed the way you think about how these systems need to be planned and tested?
Speaker 7:Yeah, testing is tricky for firms. There's always a limited number of resources in order to perform testing at the same time that you're building the changes themselves. And the thing that's tricky, especially for a mere refit, is you've got to look at testing not only the type of derivatives that you execute, but also the lifecycle events that go with that. And then couple all of that with the fact that there's no substitute for real live data, and so the synthetic data is useful to a point, but really the real go live data is where all of the different edge cases and everything like that come out of the woodwork and test how good your implementation was. But that's hard for firms. It's hard to bring all those together in synthetic data, and so it still has a purpose, but isn't as good as live, actual derivatives themselves.
Speaker 1:Now we've gone from 140 fields up to 207, something like. I know you'll know the exact number, but has this really enhanced the data quality? Are we now seeing this information getting piped through to the ECB? Is it hitting monetary policy committees? Is it making a difference to systemic risk in Europe stabilizing at a time, of course, when we might see regulatory rollback in the States? We could see a lot of changes and our sort of journey towards data harmonization seems to be sort of on a bit of a knife edge at the minute.
Speaker 7:Yeah, so the fields went up to 204, including the execution agent. A lot of the new fields were around commodities reporting, and so it's useful to give that granularity. The real increase in the data quality is around the change to existing fields and clarification for those existing fields, whether that be the validation rules or in the guidelines that the reg laces have released, and that's really, really useful. And so, for example, the changes that have gone into the validation rules counter some of the items that were in the previous ESMA Q&A where either there was mistakes or confusion from the regulator or something like that, and so they all point towards the right level of data quality or increasing data quality as those validation rules get stricter, and so that's the right way forward for firms.
Speaker 1:Now a couple of completely off-topic questions for you. Number one uh kaizen, have uh received, uh, fantastic uh investment now, um, is this changing your outlook? Are you going to be scaling up your department, launching new products? I mean, what's on the hartley desk right now?
Speaker 7:yeah, lots for that. So we're really excited about uh working with our new investors. Lots for me and for the rest of the firm to do. We are launching different products in different regions that we currently do now, as well as increasing the clients that we have for existing products across our ReportShield range. But, yeah, it's a lot. So absolutely scaling up. There's a lot to do there, but also scaling up in the right way. So we not only increased the number of um uh people employed at kaizen um, but also using our other products, um, such as a single rule book, to make sure that firms have one source for regulatory uh resources. Uh, we make sure that we're implementing smart um changes to so firms can analyze the data. They can look online at our portals to make sure any remediation is clear and how many trades it impacts.
Speaker 1:So it's scaling up, but scaling up in the right way, and thank you, tim Hartley, director of Regulatory Reporting at Kaizen, for joining us today.
Speaker 7:Thanks, tim, great. Thank you Great to be here, andrew.
Speaker 1:Okay now those of you who remember the opening episode of the season, tim was given a spot quiz on sausages, which he had no time to prepare for, had no idea it was coming, and I think he did pretty well. Anyway, one of the questions we asked was about chorizo, and this has caused a huge amount of debate, if not controversy, as various people have waded in and said that chorizo is not a sausage and others have said they believe it is a sausage, and this issue will be decided in this very show, as I asked our guests for that. So do make sure you listen to the end for our chorizo controversy special Moving on. Of course, it's important that you know.
Speaker 1:At events like this, we also catch up with other guests to find out their view of how things played out, and I want to introduce Felicity Howley from ABN Amro Clearing, who had her own take on the challenges that Amir Refit's caused from the view of a clearing bank and market infrastructure. How has it been for you? Do you think that there are some lessons from the software industry that could get rolled through the financial sector to try and make it less of a bumpy ride next time a big regulation comes into force, like a mere refit?
Speaker 8:Yeah, I think, if I look kind of within the organization, so we're at the end of the chain, so we're getting the data from different teams and those teams don't really understand the importance of some of the fields and, especially when we have kind of glitches in systems or things that we're not receiving externally or not being processed properly, they don't actually realize the impact that that has on the reporting. And then quite often we're reporting T plus one and quite often we're finding kind of out about the issues late in the day and it means that we have to then try and fix those issues. And I think, yeah, that's maybe within the organization is a bit of a lack of understanding of those people who are working on those systems. But, um, yeah, in in terms of lessons learned, um, yeah, we, we get our information. So for the additional fields, for refit, we get our information from the ccps and we're reliant on them to be able to actually make changes to our systems.
Speaker 8:And what I saw with Reeford is the changes that had to be made. It was actually the team that I came from, market Infrastructure. The changes were huge. I mean, you're getting I think it was about 13 different specifications. You have to go through all those specifications.
Speaker 8:No CCP does it in the same way. Some they'll send you the information intraday, some they'll send the information end of day and you have to try and figure out OK, how are we going to get these fields in, how are we going to report them? And it puts huge pressure on the team to deliver that short term and also puts pressure on us because we have to test, and we need to test with the volumes that we're actually doing in production on a daily basis. So that's something that we yeah, we struggled with and we really went into an implementation squeeze with getting the specs in, analyzing them, making the changes and trying to test the data. And then you see that the quality of the testing, yeah, it could be much better, and I'd like to see in the future, amy or Rieferts, that we get there's some agreement made on when the CCPs have to provide their specifications, maybe six to eight months in advance, or maybe that they're even actually already providing the fields before we have to adhere to the regulation.
Speaker 1:Now, do you think that there needs to be more feedback as well from national competent authorities and from regulatory supervisory bodies about the key areas where the data needs to improve, where the data quality needs to be a sharper focus, so that market participants have got a better chance of getting it right first time?
Speaker 8:I think you know from the event today and the questions that have been asked during the panel, but also some questions that have been asked and discussed here while we've been having lunch, it's obvious that you know we could get some help on that. There's a lot of people asking I mean, even Roberto got the question today what fields are the regulators looking at? And I think in terms of, if you look at the AMIA regulation, why it's there? I mean we're trying to make sure that we're aware of counterparty risks. So the fields that are looking at valuation amount, notional amount collateral, I think those are the fields that are looking at valuation amount, notional amount collateral. I think those are the fields that are really the important ones. Some of them are not part of the reconciliation at the moment, but I think it would be nice if there was some kind of a report shared with all of the parties to say these are the fields that are the most important ones.
Speaker 1:And looking forwards 2025,. Do you get a break now? Are you going to get a little christmas holiday, get to put your feet up, maybe a spot of skiing, or are you going to be in the office with a sandwich from, uh, the dispensing machine, uh, hammering your way through everything to get ready for dora and whatever is coming after that?
Speaker 8:I do get time to have a little Christmas break. I'm actually going to Ireland, so I get a little bit of a holiday. But yeah, I mean, 2024 has been. It's been a crazy year for all of us. And you know, there is there's one month left and just even though it's only a few weeks, it actually feels like we still have to deliver a lot in 2024. 2025, yeah, we still want to enhance our systems. We want to make sure that our controls are all in place, that we're looking at the data accuracy as well. So we already have a huge amount of work for 2025. And, of course, there's all the other things that are going on as well, and we also want to upgrade our systems as well. We have lifecycle management that needs to be taking place. But I will be taking a sabbatical.
Speaker 1:Fizzi Hallie, thank you so much for joining us and congratulations on a great panel.
Speaker 8:Yeah, I look forward to the quiz the next time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, by the way, is chorizo a sausage? Now, this wouldn't really be a proper Regisier Roundup show without a few words from this man, the man who put the canary in the wharf, the man who was in Devonshire at Never Square and also now known as the man who's in charge of St Mary's Axe. It is, of course, mr John Kernan, the CEO of Registrary in the UK, who's enjoying something of the limelight after a hugely successful UK implementation of Amir Refit, and I managed to drag John into a side room at the very, very busy event, uh, so we could catch up about uk emir and what next year is looking like for him well, it's certainly gone, um, it's certainly gone a lot more smoothly than it did in the european union, which, of course, is only to be expected.
Speaker 9:Really, um, most of our uk clients already have european union Union reporting obligations and so, you know, they've worked through a lot of the systemic issues in, you know, with sourcing the data and data accuracy. So, yeah, touch wood, there's still a few things we need to do, but rejection rates have been incredibly low after the first few days and, touch wood, things are going well. So now our UK clients really, they now need to focus on upgrading their open trade data. They have a few more months yet um to complete that and then, of course, I think in september, uh, there will be um introduction of addition, uh, reconciliation fields that they need to focus on.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, um, pretty successful, I would say uh, but we certainly can't rest on our laurels do you think that the uk implementation benefited from coming about six months later, so there was a chance to actually see what real data does? Because there's been a few people today who have talked about this idea that the synthetic data and the test data just didn't come in hard enough or quickly enough to really replicate what the live environment would be like in the European implementation of EMEA.
Speaker 9:Yeah, I think that's certainly the case. Yeah, I mean, you can do tens of thousands of test cases and you know you still very often you only flush out systemic issues by actually reporting in production. So I think that's the case. The other consideration is, of course, by definition, the UK volumes are lower because it's one market versus 27 markets, so there's less complexity in that regard. Fewer NCAAs, obviously. So I think there are a few different considerations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, one of the really nice things about this annual event is I get to catch up with old friends, and here we have the Managing Director of Registry RUK, david Retana, fresh from his panel here, busy networking with clients and doing all the things that an MD has to do, but I've managed to grab him to ask a few questions. David, since we last spoke, it's been a long 2024. Were you expecting it to be quite such a big challenge, not just for the trade repositories and market infrastructure, but for the whole industry?
Speaker 10:Oh, yes, we were expecting that, definitely For us. It was explained in the panels and Alfonso explained it quite well and Alfonso explained it quite well. For us it was a double challenge because of the implementation of a brand new technology and also implementation of a so radical regulatory change with a fixed deadline. So we don't have to forget that. So definitely for the Europeans, it was for sure that it was going to be a path of pain, let's say, and yeah, definitely we had to do it.
Speaker 10:I would say that on the UK side they were smart to say, okay, let's see what our friends in the EU perform after the implementation, and then we will see after four months. So definitely, the implementation in the UK has been so much smoother in comparison with the turmoil in the EU. We were lucky of that definitely. Now the situation is much more stable on the EU side and we are happy for that. And I'm pretty sure I mean in three months' time In three months' time probably, we will have a state-of-the-art system working perfectly and ready for improving and ready for implementing ancillary services for customers. This is our main objective for the next season, is our main objective for the next season. I think it is imperative because after all these years of pain with constant regulatory changes, now it is time to devote time to customers and implement ancillary services. So, yeah, very much looking forward to the next season.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, David. Thank you for joining us. I know you're very busy, so I'm going to say goodbye, good luck, and let's not leave it a year next time.
Speaker 10:Thank you very much, Andrew.
Speaker 1:So we need to bring the show to a close, uh, but before we go, uh, we do need to settle the question of whether or not chorizo is a sausage. Now, in episode one, uh, you might remember, we started giving our guests surprise quizzes to see what would happen, and one of the first people completely unprepared to get hit with the quiz bomb was, of course, tim Hartley, director of Regulatory Reporting at Kaizen, and he was up against John Graham, whose specialist topic was Bruce Springsteen. John did fabulously well. Well done, john, if you're listening. John Graham from the Futures Association, tim had some pretty controversial questions, one of which was hotly debated afterwards by the Spanish members of the crew, because we said chorizo was a sausage and chorizo is not a sausage, or is it? This is the question we settle now with the great chorizo debate.
Speaker 1:So, please, as the music plays us out, and I invite all of you to join us for our very special part two show, which will also have some special Christmas messages, and don't forget to join us for our very special part two show, which will also have some special Christmas messages. And don't forget to join us on our LinkedIn page, that's linkedincom. Slash company, slash register, hyphen TR, where you can find out more about our event. You can see all the pictures. You can find our Flickr gallery with lots and lots of pics of all the participants there. Plus, of course, you can network with everyone that's been in this show, and more besides. And in the meantime, I'm going to leave you with the great chorizo debate. In these days of data harmonization and improving quality and reducing rejection rates, we need to get our sausages right. Or do we?
Speaker 1:And one final question, which is there are two sort of hot debates that have been flying around here. One is is an FX forward, a derivative or not? There's some confusion about that, depending on where you go in Europe. And of course, the other part of that question is is chorizo a sausage or not? Because in spain apparently not. What's your view on these?
Speaker 7:so the fx uh is interesting. The um, yeah, it depends. The um national competent authority, uh for um, of which is often more than one for each country, still has the deciding say on what is a derivative, and under remear it's all derivatives that be reported. So, in short, firms that are not sure would need to check with their nca whether that particular product, such as an fx forward, is a reportable product under remear I. Is it deemed to be a derivative? For example, under the fca, fx forwards are reportable whereas fx spots are not a derivative. For example, under the fca, fx forwards are reportable whereas fx spots are not. On the more thorny topic of chorizo and sausages, yeah, I, um, it definitely looks like a sausage, it smells like a sausage and it's great, but my spanish friends tell me it's absolutely not a sausage and so, but all of those things are very hard pill to swallow. So for the time being, since we're in Madrid, I'm going to say it's not a sausage, but it is very enjoyable and thank you to all our Spanish friends for that education.
Speaker 6:I don't think so. Do you think so?
Speaker 1:I couldn't possibly say you know, I have to remain neutral on this one. Whatever it is, it's delicious.
Speaker 6:It is delicious. I thought, so I wouldn't say so, yes.
Speaker 5:Well, it's a kind because, if we understand sausage, it's something that you have meat inside and in the how to say, the piece of the stomach. Yes, it's sausage.
Speaker 8:I think it is. I don't know about the Spanish people here today.
Speaker 10:Of course not. I'm Spanish. It's like rice with things is not paella, for example. Of course not.
Speaker 9:It's a sausage and you know now I've said that I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1:You are, thank you. That's Nick Abruz, the former head of business development, now on the run, and, andres, where do you stand on the chorizo debate?
Speaker 10:I agree with Nick. To be honest, my bosses are in Spanish, so I'm not going to lose my job, but I agree with him.
Speaker 9:Yes, it is a sausage. Why do you ask?
Speaker 4:I know this is a tricky question and it is not ask.
Speaker 8:I know this is a tricky question and it is not, it's a thing on its own, I wouldn't call it a sausage.
Speaker 10:but if it serves for anything, do not put it on paella Chorizo. Yes, well, it depends on which country you are. In Spain it is a sausage, but if you go to Argentina, I know it's something different, but here in Spain it's a sausage.
Speaker 4:Saute it with paprika right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but is that sausage? I would believe, yeah, I would say yeah, absolutely 100%.
Speaker 8:I'm always against it. No, it's 100% fact. No, it is not a sausage.
Speaker 4:No, it's not, it's not, it's not. Chorizo is much better than a sausage. Yeah, no, it's not, it's not, it's not. Chorizo is much better than a sausage, and I invite everybody coming to Spain to taste our chorizo, which is something so typical Spanish that doesn't have a translation. I think, yeah, no, chorizo. So repeat, all with me Chorizo.