Articles

1.       FCA: Response to key comments from the independent panels' annual reports for 2018-19 FCA has published its response to key comments from the annual reports of FSCP, FCA PP, FCA SBPP and FCA MPP. Specific areas covered include: Brexit; FCA’s priorities; operational and cyber resilience; crypto assets; Mortgage Markets Study; duty of care; fair pricing; consumer credit; Retirement Outcomes...

Brexit: Doing Insurance business in France post exit day On 31 October 2019 EIOPA published Member State responses to its February 2019 ‘Recommendations for the insurance sector in light of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union’. ACPR, the French regulator has indicated that it does not intend to comply with these recommendations. For full details see our RegZone report here.

On 31 October 2019 EIOPA published Member State responses to its February 2019 ‘Recommendations for the insurance sector in light of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union’. 

We are pleased to issue our updated Guide to Passporting: Rules on Marketing Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities in Europe.

The UCITS Directive was established to harmonise retail collective investment schemes in the EU through the introduction of a common investment vehicle known as a “UCITS”. One of the key benefits of the UCITS Directive is that UCITS can be established and regulated in one EU member state and offered in others without the need for further authorisation by virtue of passporting rights under the UCITS Directive.

The purpose of this guide is to assist UCITS managers to understand the process and regulatory costs involved in exercising such passporting rights throughout Europe. To view and interactive version of the guide click here, to download our guide, please click here. 

We are pleased to issue our updated Guide to Private Placement of Funds: Accessing European Investors post-AIFMD.

When implementing the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (“AIFMD”), some EU States have tightened or severely restricted their private placement regimes, which is important when non-EU managers and funds look to access EU investors.

Our Guide briefly summarises the latest developments in relation to the private placement regimes of EU States, as well as covering certain non-EU States. To view an interactive version of the Guide click here. Please click here to download the Guide.

We are pleased to issue our updated Guide to Passporting: Rules on Marketing Alternative Investment Funds in Europe.

The EU Commission promoted passporting rights as one of the key benefits for hedge, private equity, real estate and other alternative investment fund managers authorised under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (“AIFMD”).

However, we are now experiencing impediments to the passporting rights as certain domestic regulators are imposing ‘border controls’, and fund managers need to pay fees and comply with various other requirements in order to market their funds cross-border.

The diversity of the domestic rules makes it challenging for AIFMD authorised managers to assess the costs and various other requirements for penetrating the EU market. This guide provides a road map, which will hopefully assist managers in understanding the costs and other requirements under AIFMD, other EU directives and domestic regulations.

To view and interactive version of the Guide click here or to download a copy of our Guide, please click here.

This week put Brexit preparations on the back-burner as the Article 50 exit date was put back and the ratification of the revised Withdrawal Agreement (“WA”) by the UK Parliament was abandoned in favour of a general election. We will therefore be pausing our weekly email commentary until the New Year. The Article 50 extension (see Document 5 below) delays the UK's exit until 11.00 pm GMT on 31st...

Commentary This week saw the publication, and start of the UK’s legislative process for, the long-awaited bill to ratify and implement the EU/UK Withdrawal Agreement (“WA”). The revised WA was published on 19th October (for our commentary and links to publications about the revised WA package – see below. The WA is very largely unchanged from the version negotiated by Mrs. May except for the Protocol...

Commentary This week saw the successful conclusion of negotiations over the revised Withdrawal Agreement (“WA”) (see Document 2 below) and the Queen’s Speech (see Document 1 below). However, the outcome of the Brexit process remains uncertain and the new domestic legislative program is overshadowed by the prospects of a general election.

RegZone reporting on Brexit for financial services firms Until May of this year, RegZone published a weekly email update with Brexit news and commentary. Over the summer we have produced a fortnightly Brexit news report which was on the RegZone website (but not sent out by email). You can access the previous reports here. As promised, we are now reverting to a weekly commentary distributed by emai...