If a man like Michael Spencer – the formidably ambitious head of ICAP – was parking his tanks on your lawn, it might make you nervous. So it is no wonder that MTS, the dominant eurozone government bond exchange, is feeling jittery.

Last week, ICAP issued a report which lambasted the way that Europe trades government bonds. In particular, it claimed that the current system, which channels most trading onto MTS, undermines “competition” and called on the European Commission to change the rules, to favour rival platforms, such as those run by . . . er . . . ICAP.