In a joint letter Banca d’Italia, along with 24 other national central banks and EU financial supervisors, is asking the European Commission to ensure that the proposal to be published this autumn to update capital adequacy rules for banks is adopted in a timely manner and complies fully and coherently with the global agreement known as Basel III. 

Published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 8 September 2021, the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1456of 2 June 2021 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council by specifying the conditions under which the commercial terms for clearing services for OTC derivatives are to be considered to be fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory and transparent.

The Regulation highlights that to ensure that commercial terms are reasonable, ensuring unbiased and rational contractual arrangements, fees, prices, and discounts should be based on objective criteria, including volumes cleared, clearing patterns and needs and requirements of a client. To avoid unbalanced pricing structures and conflicts of interests, fees, prices and discounts should be carefully designed. Fees charging costs to clients should clearly distinguish between costs directly related to the provision of clearing services to the client concerned and costs related to the provision of clearing services in general, separately for each cost item, including IT costs, licensing costs and costs for collateral management.

The Regulation will apply from 9 March 2022.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has published two papers examining key aspects of the ESG investment market with the aim of establishing solid standards and best practices for this sector.

The papers focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) for sustainability-related derivatives and accounting treatment for ESG transactions: