Introduction On 28 September 2017, the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) submitted its final report containing draft Regulatory Technical Standards (“RTS”) on the trading obligation for derivatives under MiFIR with respect to interest rate swaps (“IRS”) and credit default swaps (“CDS”) to the European Commission (“EC”).  The EC has three months to decide whether […]

Wood v Capita Insurance Services Ltd [2017] UKSC 24 Introduction Ambiguity in contracts is not unheard of. In the recent case of Wood v Capita Insurance Services Limited[1], we found the opportunity to have a closer look at the Supreme Court’s guidance on contractual interpretation. The exercise was so instructive that we thought we would […]

  Introduction On 26 June 2017, the FCA published its consultation paper, “Individual Accountability: Extending the Senior Managers & Certification Regime to all FCA firms”.  The deadline for responses is 3 November 2017. In future, if they are to sleep easily, all Senior Managers will have to be able to prove that they have taken […]

African Export-Import Bank & Others v Shebah Exploration & Production Company Ltd & Others [2017] EWCA Civ 845 Introduction The recent Court of Appeal case of African Export-Import Bank v Shebah dealt with a Rumsfeldian “known unknown” – the question of whether dealing on negotiated industry standard terms could be said to be dealing on […]

On 19 June 2017, ESMA published a consultation paper on the trading obligation for derivatives, as detailed in Articles 28 and 32 of MiFIR.[1]  The closing date for responses is 31 July 2017. By way of reminder, derivatives that are subject to the trading obligation under MiFIR may only be traded on: A Regulated Market; […]

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in FCA v Macris is likely to have a significant effect on the way that enforcement bodies draft, publish and craft their warnings and final enforcement notices. To begin, please consider the following scenarios: Scenario A: A notice is drafted that places blame with a particular set of individuals. The […]

Implied contract terms-Where are we? When considering the terms that may be implied into contracts it is always important to note that courts are in no way inclined to ‘rewrite’ legal documents. There are very few situations where a term is deemed to be ‘implied’ under English Law. Indeed many of the relevant authorities on […]

What did we learn? 1 March 2017 – deadline day for ‘big bang’ – has come and gone.  We all breathed a sigh of relief.  Or did we?  Regulators recognised the fact that firms would not be compliant and, in general, counselled the industry to ‘do your best to get it done by 1 September’.  […]

Introduction With VM CSA repapering in full swing over at DRS, this article took a while longer to write than first anticipated.  It has now been two weeks since ISDA published another two supplemental rules exhibits further amending the ISDA 2016 Variation Margin Protocol (the “Protocol”) on 27 January 2017: Supplemental Rules Exhibit for Non-Netting […]