We live in an era in which regulators and the court of public opinion are often unforgiving of any perceived or actual failings. The implementation of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) for FCA firms has brought this home but it is part of a much bigger picture. We have seen an increasing focus
On 27 March 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced that it had decided to keep the date of application of the transparency calculations for equity instruments of 1 April 2020 unchanged.
ESMA has recently been asked by some stakeholders to postpone the date of application – required by MiFID II
On 27 March 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a statement on the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on the deadlines for publishing financial reports which apply to listed issuers under the Transparency Directive (TD).
In the statement ESMA notes that issuers maybe prevented from fulfilling their reporting
On 26 March 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) launched a public consultation on post trade risk reduction services (PTRR) under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).
ESMA is mandated to provide a final report to the European Commission, in cooperation with the European Systemic Risk Board,
On 26 March 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) launched a consultation paper on draft Regulatory and Implementing Technical Standards (RTS and ITS) under Regulation (EU) 2019/834 (EMIR REFIT).
The ESMA consultation paper covers the technical standards on reporting requirements, procedures to reconcile and validate the data
On 27 March 2020, there was published in the Official Journal of the EU Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/448 amending Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/2251, which contains regulatory technical standards (RTS) supplementing the European Market Infrastructure Regulation on risk mitigation techniques for over-the-counter derivative contracts, in connection with certain simple, transparent and standardised securitisations for
On 27 March 2020, there was published in the Official Journal of the EU Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/447 supplementing the European Market Infrastructure Regulation with regard to regulatory technical standards on the specification of criteria for establishing the arrangements to adequately mitigate counterparty credit risk associated with covered bonds and securitisations and amending Delegated
On 27 March 2020, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel Committee) announced the following changes to its implementation timeline of the outstanding Basel III standards:
As market volatility has increased in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, several competent authorities have imposed bans on short sales in certain shares.
Approach taken by the FCA
To date, the FCA has introduced only temporary prohibitions on short selling in certain listed instruments, on the 13 and 17 March 2020, as set out
On 27 March 2020, the FCA published Handbook Notice 75.
In this Handbook Notice the FCA summarises the changes it made in the FCA Handbook on 26 March 2020 using the following instruments: