Regulatory notices
On Thursday 27 May 2021, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its Report on Guidelines under the Regulation on cross-border distribution of funds in accordance with the Regulation (EU) 2019/1156 of 20 June 2019 on that topic and especially in connection with the articles related to the marketing communications that will apply from August 2nd, 2021.
The publication of the report follows the consultation process started in November last year and for which we have communicated on the draft at this time.
On 14 May 2021, the FCA launched a consultation on a “New Consumer Duty” aiming to reinforce the protection of the retail investors by describing the expectations of the regulator on the behaviour that regulated firms should adopt by setting out the Consumer Duty as rules and guidance in the FCA Handbook.
Yesterday 11 May 2021, the European Commission launched its consultation on a retail investment strategy in Europe.
In September 2020, the European Commission, in its new capital markets union (CMU) action plan, announced its intention to publish a strategy for retail investments in Europe in the first half of 2022. Its aim will be to seek to ensure that retail investors can take full advantage of capital markets and that rules are coherent across legal instruments.
This public consultation will serve to gather views and evidence which will help the Commission developing its policies.
On 7 May 2021, the Minister of Finance deposited with the Parliament the draft Bill transposing in Luxembourg jurisdiction the Directive (EU) 2019/2162 of the European Parliament and the Council of 27 November 2019 on the issue of covered bonds and covered bond public supervision and amending Directives 2009/65/EC and 2014/59/EU.
This Directive must be implemented by 8 July 2021 by the EU Member States for application on 8 July 2022.
On 7 of May 2021, the FCA published a statement on its work on liquidity mismatch in authorised open-ended property funds.
The FCA declared pursuing working on its policy statement based on the feedback received and final rules maybe expected not before Q3 this year at the earliest as the FCA want to overcome the operational barriers especially as regards redemption notice periods.
The CSSF published yesterday a User Guide on MMFR art. 37.
We have grouped below the questions by topics.
On Friday 30 April 2021, the FCA published the Collective Investment Schemes sourcebook (bearer certificates) Instrument 2021. This Instrument finalised the revision of the FCA Handbook implementing the ban of bearer shares in the United Kingdom.
On 28 April 2021, the Securities and Futures Commission, the Hong Kong securities market watchdog updated several FAQs and Guide consequently to the recent revamped QFI rules and the introduction of the electronic dissemination of financial product documents.
Especially, 2 documents have retained our attention:
On 26 and 27 of April 2021, the Consob has amended its documentation related to the PRIIPs KID ex-ante submission procedure.
We have reviewed the documents and according to our analysis the changes are the following: