There has been published the minutes of a MiFID II implementation roundtable held at the FCA on 30 November 2015. Among the points raised in the minutes:

• the European Parliament had written to the European Commission (the Commission) saying that it is willing to consider a delay of a year to the overall date of application to MiFID II. The Commission now needs to decide whether to make a formal legislative proposal to put back the date of application of MiFID II to 3 January 2018;
• it did not appear any change to the date of application would be linked to the completion of the Level 2 measures;
• the application date for the Market Abuse Regulation was unlikely to change;
• if a delay occurred it would be necessary to use the additional time to consider what could be done to smooth the implementation of several provisions linked to data on the overall size of the EU market;
• the legislative process for agreeing legislation to formalise a delay could take several months after any proposal from the Commission;
• the precise time at which the delegated acts and the technical standards will be adopted remains uncertain but it seems likely to be in the next two months;
• the European Parliament has expressed concern about the regulatory technical standards (RTS) on position limits, the ancillary exemption, and non-equity transparency – which suggests those are areas in which the RTS might change compared to the drafts provided by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA);
• the FCA still intends to publish its first consultation paper on MiFID II implementation in the middle of December 2015. In light of the possible change to the date of application and the fact that the delegated acts have not yet been adopted, the FCA would need to consider: (i) whether it would be possible or make sense to publish its second consultation paper in March 2016; and (ii) exactly when it would seek to finalise the changes to the Handbook;
• ESMA is working on level 3 material but progress is varied across the different workstreams. Most of ESMA’s Level 3 work will not be published until after the completion of the approval processes for the implementing measures;
• the Commission is unlikely to provide any mandates to ESMA for technical advice on third country equivalence until the MiFID II implementing measures are finalised; and
• the FCA said it would be holding a special roundtable in February 2016 to discuss product governance and costs and charges disclosure.

View Minutes of the meeting of the MiFID II implementation roundtable, 8 December 2015