- The FSA has sharpened its focus on transaction reporting failures, as demonstrated by a series of significant fines on sizeable financial institutions. In April 2010, Credit Suisse, Getco Europe Ltd, Instinet Europe Ltd and Commerzbank AG received substantial fines of £1.75 m, £1.4 m, £1.05 m and £595,000, respectively, for transaction reporting breaches; in August 2010, Société Générale received a £1.575 m fine. Further in January 2011 City Index was fined £490,000 for transaction reporting breaches. The FSA has invested in a new surveillance and monitoring system, Zen, which replaces the existing Sabre II system. This system went live in August 2011 and is expected to strengthen market abuse monitoring, alerting and reporting functions in the UK.
- For ordinary equity, we anticipate that the relevant competent authority may be identified by electronic feed providers and tied to CUSIPs. However, for some products companies may face significant burden and costs in identifying the proper competent authority.
- The Regulation specifies that public disclosure must be made in a manner ensuring fast access on a non-discriminatory basis. The public information will be posted on a central website operated or supervised by the relevant competent authority. ESMA will have a link to all such central websites on its own website.
- A “trading venue” is defined as an EU-regulated market (eg the main markets of the London Stock Exchange or Luxembourg Stock Exchange) or a multilateral trading facility (eg Chi-X Europe, BATS Europe).
- See eg text adopted by Parliament, partial vote at 1st reading/single reading (5 July 2011) Art 6.
- For comparison, in the US, Rule 200 of Regulation SHO requires that sales in all equity securities be marked “long,” “short” or “short exempt.”
- With regard to sovereign debt, the word “and” in the last criterion is replaced by the word “or”.
- With regard to sovereign debt, the word “and” in the last criterion is replaced by the word “or”.
- See “Principles for Enhancing Corporate Governance” at www.bis.org/publ/bcbs168.htm (noting that the “sheer number of legal entities, and in particular the interconnections and intra-group transactions among such entities, can lead to challenges in identifying, overseeing and managing the risks of the organisation as a whole, which is a risk in and of itself “).
Law and Financial Markets Review
Volume 6, 2012 - Issue 2