The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a speech by Steven Maijoor, ESMA Chair, at L’Agefi’s Regulation Financiere 2015 event on bond market transparency and Capital Markets Union.

Key points in Mr Maijoor’s speech include that ESMA will shift its focus and resources to ensuring the consistent implementation of the EU single rulebook. ESMA is in the final stages of creating its first annual supervisory convergence work programme which it expects to publish in early 2016. Mr Maijoor also mentions that ESMA submitted its final rules on transparency and liquidity for the bond market to the European Commission in September and has seen some resistance to taking steps to enhance transparency in the bond market due to concerns that it may impact liquidity. Mr Maijoor states that introducing transparency to the EU bond markets is a matter of carefully calibrating liquidity thresholds to provide investors with the right balance between transparency and protection and this, he believes, will contribute to fostering liquidity. In fact, Mr Maijoor is convinced that ESMA’s final rules represent the best technical approach permitted within the construct of MiFID II.

View Steven Maijoor delivers keynote at L’Agefi Regulation Financiere 2015 on CMU and bond markets, 10 December 2015