Shearman & Sterling LLP (JD Supra European Union)

Following its consultation earlier this year, the Financial Stability Board has published a final report on the regulation, supervision and oversight of global stablecoin arrangements. In the report, the FSB discusses the characteristics of GSCs, the risks posed by GSCs, existing approaches to regulating and supervising GSCs and issues with cross-border supervision of GSCs. Alongside the report,...

The Financial Stability Board has published a Roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. The Roadmap is the final stage in the G20's three-stage process to enable countries to enhance their cross-border payments systems. The FSB published the Stage 1 report in April 2020, which identified existing challenges in cross-border payments systems and specified key "frictions" in the cross-border...

On September 24, 2020 the European Commission (EC) launched proposals for a new EU-wide regime to regulate crypto-assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the financial sector through a Digital Finance Package. Key issues relevant to companies and stakeholders in digital finance are set out below.

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published updated statements on the impact of Brexit on the application of the Markets in Financial Instruments package and the EU Benchmark Regulation. ESMA issued statements in 2019 to clarify the position in a no-deal scenario. These latest statements provide updates to take into account the Withdrawal Agreement and the end of the Brexit...

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published a final report and final guidelines on the portability of information between securitization repositories under the EU Securitization Regulation. ESMA is responsible for the registration and supervision of securitization repositories. It is required under the Securitization Regulation to develop guidelines for supervisory purposes and...

The European Central Bank has published a report by the Eurosystem High-Level Task Force on a digital euro. The digital euro would be a form of central bank digital currency. No decision has been taken yet to issue a digital euro. The report sets out the reasons for having a digital euro, the potential impact of a digital euro, legal considerations, functional design possibilities and technical...

The European Securities and Markets Authority has announced that it has granted temporary third-country recognition to three U.K. CCPs from January 1, 2021 under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. ESMA's announcement follows the time-limited equivalence decision for the U.K.'s legal and regulatory supervision regime of U.K. CCPs, which was published on September 21, 2020. The third-cou

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published final draft Technical Standards on the provision of investment services and activities in the EU by third-country firms under the Markets in Financial Instruments package. Amendments that were made to the MiFID II package under the Investment Firm Regulation and Directive require, among other things, third-country firms providing...

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published a final report on the review of the Market Abuse Regulation.

The European Commission has published a Communication to EU bodies on its Capital Markets Union Action Plan. The CMU is an EU initiative which aims to enhance and further integrate the capital markets of EU Member States. An action plan to develop the initiative was first adopted in 2015 and has been commented upon and updated since then. The Commission's Communication sets out the latest Action...

In this newsletter, we provide a snapshot of the principal European, U.S., U.K. and selected international governance and securities law developments of interest to European corporates. Please see full Newsletter below for more information.

The European Commission has published a proposal for a new EU Regulation on a pilot regime for distributed ledger technology. The pilot regime is intended to promote legal certainty, to support innovation, to preserve market integrity and to ensure financial stability for the use of DLT in crypto-asset and e-money token markets. The Commission has simultaneously published a proposed Regulation on

The European Commission has published a proposal for a new EU Regulation on crypto-assets. The proposed Regulation is intended to improve legal certainty in the regulatory treatment of crypto-assets, to support the development of crypto-assets, to preserve consumer protection and market integrity in crypto-asset markets and to ensure financial stability. The Commission has simultaneously...

The European Commission has published a Communication on its EU retail payments strategy for the coming years. The payments sector has experienced significant change in recent years. Retail payments are increasingly dematerialized and disintermediated, with large technology companies playing a more significant part in the payments sector. The EU payments market is also largely fragmented along...

The European Commission has published proposals for a new EU Regulation on digital operational resilience for the financial sector and a new EU Directive amending certain pieces of existing EU financial services legislation to strengthen digital operational resilience and provide legal certainty on crypto-assets. The new legislation has been proposed as a result of the risks arising from the...

We are pleased to publish the Third Edition of our Energy & Infrastructure Insight, providing information and analysis of the current issues facing the energy and infrastructure sectors across the globe. In this latest edition we examine the European infrastructure market and consider the differing impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on M&A activity by sector and the terms of the deals being...

The European Banking Authority has confirmed that it will phase out its Guidelines on legislative and non-legislative payment moratoria in accordance with its September 30, 2020 deadline. The EBA originally published the Guidelines in April 2020, stipulating that, for a period of three months, banks should not class payment moratoria that were based on national law or private-sector initiatives...

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has written to the Co-Chairs of the Financial Stability Board Official Sector Steering Group seeking input on its proposed timing for the launch of its IBOR Fallbacks Protocol and IBOR Fallbacks Supplement...

The International Organization of Securities Commissions has published guidance on how to address potential conflicts of interest and associated conduct risks for intermediaries involved in the issuance of debt securities. Intermediaries may perform a variety of roles on a debt capital raising transaction and may also have a proprietary interest in the transaction itself.  In 2017, the IOSCO...

In her first speech upon being reappointed as Competition Commissioner, Commissioner Vestager announced that a review would be undertaken of the Commission’s Market Definition Notice (the “Notice”); the consultation on that review closed Friday, October 9th. The Notice is an important document in European competition law; it sets out the analytical framework under which the Commission decides who

Three Commission Delegated Regulations have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, supplementing the revised European Market Infrastructure Regulation. The Delegated Regulations contain provisions related to the changes introduced by EMIR 2.2, the amending EU Regulation that came into force on January 1, 2020 and introduced changes to the procedures and authorities involved

The European Commission has published a Decision temporarily determining that U.K. central counterparties will be deemed equivalent to EU standards under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. The Decision will apply from January 1, 2021 until June 30, 2022. The U.K.'s Brexit transition period ends on December 31, 2020, after which it will cease to form part of the EU's arrangement for...

The European Central Bank has published a Decision in the Official Journal of the European Union temporarily excluding certain central bank exposures from significant Eurozone banks' leverage ratio calculations for the purposes of the EU Capital Requirements Regulation. The Decision will enter into force on September 26, 2020 and the exclusion will apply until June 27, 2021.

The European Central Bank has published its final Guide on the assessment methodology it will use to examine: (i) the internal model methods banks use to calculate exposures to counterparty credit risk; and (ii) the advanced methods banks use to calculate own funds requirements for credit valuation adjustment risk. The EU Capital Requirements Regulation requires the ECB to permit banks to use...

The European Securities and Markets Authority has renewed its decision requiring holders of net short positions in shares traded on an EU-regulated market to notify national regulators if the position reaches or exceeds 0.1% of issued share capital. ESMA originally introduced the requirement on March 16, 2020 for a period of three months, extending it for a further three months on June 17, 2020....

The European Banking Authority has published a survey designed to collect information on large banks' disclosure practices on environmental, social and governance risks. The EU Capital Requirements Regulation implements the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's Pillar 3 disclosure requirements, which require banks to disclose information about their risks and risk management procedures and...

The European Securities and Markets Authority has announced the delay of the publication dates by investment firms and trading venues of the annual transparency calculations for non-equity instruments (other than bonds) from September 15, 2020 to September 21, 2020. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation, which became effective on January 3,

The Financial Stability Board has announced delays to the implementation of minimum haircut standards for non-centrally cleared securities financing transactions. SFTs involve the use of securities to borrow cash or other higher investment-grade securities, or vice versa. Such transactions can include repurchase transactions, securities lending and sell/buy backs. In 2015, the FSB published its...

Several EU Technical Standards supplementing the EU Securitization Regulation have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The Securitization Regulation has applied directly across the EU since January 1, 2019. It provides the criteria for identifying which securitizations will be designated as "simple, transparent and standardized" (STS) securitizations, a system to monitor

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published a press release confirming that certain requirements under the Securitization Regulation will enter into force on September 23, 2020.