On 23 July 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) updated its Q&As on the application of the UCITS Directive and the AIFMD. The new UCITS Q&As relates to issuer concentration, UCITS investment, supervisory responsibilities of competent authorities, and depositaries. The new AIFMD Q&As concern the supervisory responsibilities of competent authorities.
On 20 July 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority published a letter from its Chair, regarding the implementation of the Money Market Funds (MMF) Regulation, and the compatibility of the reverse distribution mechanism, often referred to as ‘share cancellation’.
In the letter, ESMA calls upon the European Commission to make clear to the public,
On 20 July 2018, the FCA published the terms of reference for its Digital Regulatory Reporting Pilot (the Pilot). Following an FCA event which proved that machine executable regulatory reporting is technologically feasible, the Pilot aims to evaluate the potential benefits of machine readable and executable regulatory reporting via the development of a minimum viable
On 20 July 2018, the Bank of England published a revised memorandum of understanding (the MOU) on UK payment systems, as part of the joint Bank of England / Prudential Regulation Authority / Financial Conduct Authority / Payment Systems Regulator (the Authorities) obligation to annually review this MOU pursuant to section 99(5) of the Financial
On July 18, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) voted to adopt amendments to Regulation ATS that impose additional public disclosure requirements on, and enhance the SEC’s oversight of alternative trading systems (“ATSs”) that facilitate transactions in National Market System stocks (“NMS Stock ATSs”).
Regulation ATS, adopted in 1998, established a regulatory framework intended
On 20 July 2018, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a policy statement, Industry codes of conduct and feedback on FCA principle 5.
The policy statement summarises the feedback from the FCA’s 2017 consultation paper on industry codes of conduct and FCA principle 5: ‘you must observe proper standards of market conduct’. To encourage
On 20 July 2018, the Law Commission published a consultation paper on anti-money laundering and the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime.
The Law Commission is seeking consultees for their views on a ranged of proposed solutions to remedy the detrimental impact of the SARs regime on the financial sector. The consultation paper has three principal
On 20 July 2018, there was published on the legislation.gov.uk website a draft version of the Building Societies Legislation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations, together with a draft explanatory memorandum.
The instrument is being made using the power within section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, to address deficiencies of retained EU law to
On 20 July 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) released a template to be used to publish the first set of figures necessary for investment firms to assess whether they are systematic internalisers in specific financial instruments. This follows numerous requests in advance of 1 August 2018, to make the template available to
We have published our latest video on Brexit. In this video Jonathan Herbst discusses the Government’s White Paper on the future EU / UK relationship. The video can be found here.