EUROPEAN UNION: ESMA Publishes Response to CMVN Market Abuse Regulations

Thursday September 28 2017

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published an opinion on the accepted market practice (AMP) notified by the Comissão do mercado de valores mobiliários (CMVM) of Portugal.

The Regulations replace the Accepted Market Practice provisions which were previously laid out in the 2008 Market Abuse Directive.

ESMA considers that the proposed AMP on liquidity contracts is compatible with the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and with its technical standard on AMPs, and contains various mechanisms to limit the threat to market confidence.

In order to provide more clarity on MAR, ESMA outlined how there are limitations to scope of the MAR Rules when it comes to Market Abuse. Exemptions to the MAR rules mean that market manipulation and insider dealing mechanisms will not apply to trading in own shares in buy-back programs or trading in securities for the stabilisation of securities when certain conditions laid down in MAR are met. ESMA’s Q and A webpage is useful in providing greater explanation on the scope of MAR

For additional information please click the link above