On 17 July 2023, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a report on Suspicious Transactions and Order Reports (STORs).

The report provides an overview of how STORs are used across different Member States in the context of the detection and investigation of market abuse, and how their use has evolved over time.

The report provides the following findings, among others:

• Despite some small discrepancies observed across 2021 and 2022, ESMA notes that the figures are rather consistent and no major changes can be detected across the two-year period.
• The number of notifications received from Member State competent authorities is rather stable and other indicators, such as the type of reporting entities, the type of instrument as well as the type of violation the notifications cover, point towards very similar results.
• The country that received most of these notifications in 2021 was Germany (3,228), accounting for more than 43% of the total. A similar trend was also observed in 2022 where Germany received 2,756 notifications (40% of the total). Both in 2021 and 2022, France received the majority of notifications after Germany (929 and 878, accounting for 12% and 13% of the total, respectively), followed by the Netherlands and Sweden in 2021 (5%) and Hungary in 2022 (6%).
• When comparing these figures with those of the years before 2019, the Brexit effect cannot be disregarded given the magnitude of STORs received by the UK FCA until 2018.

ESMA would like to emphasize that the data until 2018 includes the UK whereas the latest figures do not.

ESMA continues to monitor STORs and may issue an updated report next year covering 2023.