ESG and D&I

On 16 April 2025, Directive (EU) 2025/794 of 14 April 2025 amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements was published in the Official Journal of the EU.

The Directive, which is known as the ‘Stop-the-clock’ Directive

Here are four items of interest for regulatory investigations lawyers from the newly published Regulatory Initiatives Grid (RIG), two to look forward to before summer and two for the second half of the year:

  1. ‘Name and shame’ proposal: The new RIG reflects the FCA’s 11 March 2025 letter to the Treasury Select Committee

On 15 April 2025, the European Commission (“the Commission”) launched a public consultation on a review of Directive 2003/87/EC establishing a system for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Union (ETS Directive) and Decision (EU) 2015/1814 concerning the establishment and operation of a market stability reserve for the Union greenhouse gas emission

On 15 April 2025, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its benchmarking report on remuneration and gender pay gap for institutions and investment firms.

Background

The EBA collects remuneration and gender pay gap data from national competent authorities for benchmarking under the Capital Requirements Directive and the Investment Firms Directive (IFD)

On 14 April 2025, the Council of the EU formally adopted the ‘Stop-the-clock’ Directive under the Omnibus I package. The Directive postpones the dates of application of certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements, as well as the transposition deadline of the due diligence provisions.

The Omnibus I package was adopted by the European

On the same day as HM Treasury’s publication of an action plan setting out a ‘new approach’ to ensure regulators support growth, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has sent a clear message to the financial services industry that it is prepared to tackle non-financial misconduct which it considers demonstrates a lack of integrity

After much speculation regarding the fate of various outstanding FCA initiatives in relation to investigation announcements, D&I and non-financial misconduct, last week the FCA confirmed that:

1. it will no longer take forward the following proposals:

  1. to implement a new public interest test for announcing investigations into regulated firms (known as the ‘name and shame’