With the end of the first quarter of the year, March brought with it a number of developments on a range of areas, including: UCITS & AIFMD, Money Market Fund Regulation, Liquidity Risk Management, Short Selling, ESG and ELTIF Regulation. See below this month’s regulatory round-up to read about these developments and many more we tracked throughout March.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has launched a consultation on potential reforms of the EU Money Market Funds Regulation (MMFR). This follows the SEC’s request for comment seen last month, which similar to the ESMA consultation, reviews the stress experienced by MMFs during the March 2020 crisis and assesses and proposes potential reforms.
ESMA has published the results of the 2020 Common Supervisory Action (CSA) on UCITS liquidity risk management (LRM). UCITS are characterised by the offer to investors of on-demand liquidity. Article 84(1) states that UCITS shall repurchase or redeem its units at the request of any unit-holder. If the assets held within the fund cannot be sold quickly to meet redemption requests, there could be severe issues in paying redeeming investors. This can be exacerbated in times of stress when investors may look to redeem en masse whilst the market for the assets is drying up.
February saw a number of developments on a range of areas, including: SFDR; Potential money market fund reforms in the US; The new UK short selling threshold entering into force; The PRIIPs RTS being submitted to the European Commission; and Revisions to the CSSF notification form for NAV calculation errors.
UCITS IV requires UCITS to make an updated KIID available to investors for each sub-fund/standalone fund within 35 business days of 31 December each year. With the deadline fast approaching (19th February 2021) we thought we would take a brief look at some of the key requirements of the UCITS KIID.
This week, on the 1st February 2021, the Statutory Instrument (SI) amending the initial notification threshold under Article 5(2) of the Short Selling Regulation (SSR) entered into force. The SI amends the reporting of net short positions to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), in relation to the issued share capital of a company that has shares admitted to trading on a trading venue, from 0.2% to 0.1%.
Welcome to the first monthly regulatory round-up of 2021. Each month we will be summarising the key announcements and regulatory developments impacting the fund industry. The past month brought developments on a range of issues, from updated FAQs and guidelines impacting UCITS and AIFMs, to consultations…
Yesterday, ESMA announced that it will be launching a Common Supervisory Action (CSA) with national competent authorities (NCAs) on the supervision of costs and fees of UCITS across the European Union. The CSA aims to assess the compliance of supervised entities with the relevant cost-related provisions in the UCITS framework, and the obligation of not charging investors with undue costs.
During the CSA, national competent authorities will take into account the supervisory briefing on the supervision of costs published by ESMA in June 2020.
As we move closer and closer to a no-deal Brexit, the likelihood is, that come the end of the UK’s transition period for leaving the EU (1st January 2021), major shareholders will need to consider a number of new factors to ensure they are making the correct disclosure to the correct competent authority of the issuer.
The past month brought important developments on topics such as fund liquidity, costs and fees charged by fund managers, AIFMD, UCITS and Money Market Funds. Most notably, in the UK, HM Treasury published the responses to the consultation on the Overseas Funds Regime, and the Financial Services Bill…
