On 30 November 2015, the FCA held another MiFID II Implementation roundtable meeting where the standards along with various matters concerning the regulators approach towards the implementation of the upcoming directive were discussed. Below we have provided summaries of the key take away points:
Timetable
- The European Parliament has written to the European Commission (the “Commission”) stating that it is prepared to consider a year’s delay to the date of application to MiFID II. The Commission must now decide if it will make a formal legislative proposal to put back the date to 3 January 2018.
- The FCA does not believe that a delay to MiFID II will mean any delay to completion of Level 2 work and, accordingly, the application date for the Market Abuse Regime is unlikely to change. However, if there was a delay, the additional time would be used to smooth the implementation of several provisions linked to data on the overall size of the EU market.
Implementation measures
- It seems likely that the delegated acts and the technical standards will be adopted within the next two months, as the European Parliament wants to proceed quickly on this. Additionally, concern has been express in regards to the regulatory technical standards (“RTS”) on position limits, the ancillary exemption, and non-equity transparency. This concern could mean that there may be changes to the RTS in the drafts produced by ESMA.
Consultation Paper
- The FCA plans to publish its first consultation paper (“CP”) on MiFID II implementation in December 2015, however in light of possible changes to the date of application, it needs to consider whether a second CP will need to be published in March 2016. The first CP would run for 3 months and would consider mainly market issues. Once agreement has been reached about the date of application, the FCA may consider updating the statements made about the timing process of MiFID II at its MiFID conference.
Level 3 work
- Most of the work in ESMA’s level 3 material will not be published until after completion of the approval process for the implementing measures. Discussions between the Commission and Member States on transposition issues will resume soon.
Third country issues
- There are several areas in MiFID which require an assessment of whether or not the regimes in countries outside the EU are equivalent to the regulatory regime in MiFID. The Commission is unlikely to provide any mandates to ESMA for technical advice on equivalence until the MiFID II implementing measures are finalised.
AOB
- The FCA will hold a special roundtable in February 2016 to discuss product governance and costs and charges disclosure.
To view the full MiFID II Roundtable minutes published on November 4 2015, please follow this link.
Should you require any further advice or information on MiFID II, Cleveland & Co, your external in-house counsel, are here to help.
