The FCA has published the minutes of their 22 October MiFID II Implementation Roundtable attended by FCA officials and a panoply of trade associations (TAs). Items of note as follows: Forthcoming FCA consultations. The FCA confirmed its plan to publish a draft Handbook Guide to MiFID II, focussing on the UK’s implementation. The agency will […]

As promised, ESMA has published final draft MiFID II/MiFIR  regulatory and implementing technical standards. In case regulatory teams weren’t already reeling from the 552 pages of the MiFID II RTS, ESMA also published technical standards for  MiFID II interdependent MAD/MAR and CSDR, making a total of 2505 pages of which every word will be pored […]

Speaking at yesterday’s ISDA Europe conference, ESMA chief Steven Maijoor quelled widespread doubt that MiFIDII/MiFIR final draft RTS would be published on time, “I am very determined to make sure that we deliver in the month of September. We cannot predict how board meetings go but most of the work on MiFIDII/MiFIR in terms of […]

On 10 June 2015, the Fair and Effective Markets Review (“FEMR”) published its Final Report on the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities (“FICC”) markets. The Review was launched in June 2014 to cover the following areas: ·         Trading practices ·         Scope of regulation ·         Impact of recent and forthcoming regulation ·         Supervision As an interim […]

As an early Christmas gift to European financial lawyers (and presumably their opticians as well) ESMA has today published a Consultation paper on MiFID II\MiFIR and a Consultation paper Annex B on their respective RTS. In combination, the two papers total 1165 pages, the deadline for submission of responses is 2 March 2015. While the […]

The FT has reported ESMA’s decision not to define FX derivatives for the purpose of EMIR trade reporting, deferring instead to the 2017 implementation of MiFID II. The advent of mandatory derivatives trade reporting in February exposed Europe-wide fault lines, as national authorities differed on the “derivative or not” status of forward FX contracts, a […]

On 29 September 2014, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a consultation paper regarding the definition of ‘commodity derivatives’ under paragraphs C6 and C7 of Annex 1 of MiFID I. The consultation paper is the next stage in a process which began on 14 February 2014, when ESMA wrote to the EU Commission […]

On 3 September 2014, the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group (SMSG) published four advices to ESMA on MiFID II: Investor protection Trading venues Transparency and trading obligations (equities) Transparency for the trading of non-equity instruments Following the example of the vast majority of participants who provided comments to the ESMA Consultation Paper on MiFID II, […]

Introduction The requirement to create and maintain a CASS Resolution Pack (CASS RP), formed a key plank in the FCA’s review of the client assets regime in the UK.  It requires each firm which is subject to CASS Chapter 6 (Custody rules) or Chapter 7 (Client money rules) to collate certain information regarding its handling […]