2019

On 29 March 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a final report containing guidelines on risk factors under the Prospectus Regulation (PR). ESMA is mandated to provide the guidelines under Article 16(4) of the PR to assist Member State competent authorities in their review of the specificity and materiality of risk factors

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/2070 specifies institutions’ reporting requirements to the European Banking Authority (EBA) and to Member State competent authorities in order to enable the EBA and Member State competent authorities to carry out their assessments of internal approaches in accordance with Article 78 of Directive 2013/36/EU (the benchmarking exercise).

On 29 March 2019,

On 29 March 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority updated its Q&As on:

  • the UCITS Directive. Specifically, the Q&As clarify the UCITS KIID benchmark and past performance obligations;
  • the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive. New Q&As have been added on the calculation of leverage; and
  • the Market Abuse Regulation. New Q&As have been added

Last month, the Venezuelan Ministry of National Commerce issued a notice requiring patent and trademark fees to be paid in the cryptocurrency issued by the Venezuelan government — the Petro, which supposedly is backed by Venezuela’s oil and mineral reserves.

As noted in previous posts, the United States has been increasing its economic sanctions

On 14 March, the UK Export Finance (UKEF) announced the adoption of the revised OECD Council recommendation on Bribery and Officially Supported Export Credits (the Recommendation), to prevent bribery in international business transactions.

The Recommendation, while not legally binding, strengthens anti-bribery and corruption policies and procedures across adherent Export Credit Agencies (ECAs). Current adherents to

On 28 March 2019, the FICC Markets Standards Board (FMSB) published a statement of good practice for FICC market participants in relation to conduct risk in market transactions. Eight good practice statements are included in Section V of the document, which include:

  • firms should have a taxonomy for the identification and assessment of common conduct

On 27 March 2019, The Official Listing of Securities, Prospectus and Transparency (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 were made and published on legislation.gov.uk along with an explanatory memorandum. Our earlier blog on the content of these Regulations is here.

You can track the financial services Brexit EU Exit statutory instruments (as well