ESMA has updated its Q&A related to reporting under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR).

The updated set of Q&A complements ESMA’s guidance on reporting under SFTR. The Q&As were updated to simplify reporting of SFTs when an external portfolio manager is used.

ESMA has published the Final report and the Guidelines on reporting of periodic information and material changes by Trade Repositories (TRs) supervised under EMIR and SFTR.

The Guidelines will apply from 30 June 2021 and aim to increase transparency of TRs supervised by ESMA. Their introduction will bring the following benefits:

  • reduce efforts to request this information sporadically and ensure that no information is omitted;
  • reduce processing time of information received;
  • ensure a level playing field by establishing harmonised reporting templates;
  • ensure complete information that is necessary for ESMA’s risk-based supervision;
  • improve the internal planning of ESMA’s supervision teams with regard to information review and facilitate processing; and
  • standardise practices that are already implemented by TRs on a best effort basis.

ESMA has updated its Q&A regarding market structures issues under the Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and Regulation (MiFIR).

ESMA has introduced changes to one of its Q&A on tick sizes to reflect the amendment introduced in Article 49(1) of MiFID II which excludes Large in Scale transactions from the mandatory tick size regime.

ESMA has published its Annual Report on enforcement and regulatory activities related to corporate reporting in the European Economic Area.

In 2020, European enforcers examined 729 financial statements, which led to actions against 265 issuers. Further 132 enforcement actions resulted from the examination of non-financial statements (39 actions) and the presentation and disclosure of the alternative performance measures in management reports (93 actions).

EIOPA has published its annual report on the use of exemptions and limitations from the regular supervisory reporting by national competent authorities (NCAs) under Solvency II, during 2019 and first quarterly of 2020.

Regarding quarterly reporting in Q1 2020, twelve NCAs granted limitations to 833 solo undertakings and four NCAs granted limitations and exemptions to 55 groups. Regarding annual reporting for solo undertakings, five NCAs granted limitations and exemptions from reporting using the item-by-item templates to 125 solo undertakings in 2019 and one NCA granted limitations and exemptions from annual reporting to six groups in 2019.

The limitations and exemptions on reporting foreseen in Article 35 of the Solvency II Directive are a concrete proportionality measure in reporting requirements. However, they should not be seen as the only proportionality measure.

Consob has presented the 9th Report on corporate governance of Italian listed companies.

The Report  provides evidence on ownership structures, corporate bodies, annual general meetings and related parties transactions, on the basis of data obtained from supervisory statistical reports and information disclosed by listed companies.

Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) has published an overview of sustainable finance market dynamics along with a dashboard on scaling up green finance and its Annual Report.

On the Official Journal of the European Union has been published the Guideline (EU) 2021/564 of the European Central Bank on the Eurosystem’s provision of reserve management services in euro to central banks and countries located outside the euro area and to international organisations and repealing Guideline (EU) 2020/1284 of the European Central Bank (recast) (ECB/2021/9)

On the Official Journal of the European Union has been published the Guideline (EU) 2021/565 of the European Central Bank amending Guideline (EU) 2019/1265 on the euro short-term rate (€STR) (ECB/2021/10)