Friday October 23 2015

News Source: Global Disclosures

Focus: Major Shareholdings

Type: General

Country: European Union




For the benefit of market participants, ESMA has re-published as a stand-alone document the indicative list of financial instruments subject to notification requirements for EU major shareholdings.

ESMA developed this indicative list of financial instruments and published it in Annex V of the Final Report it sent to the European Commission concerning the draft Regulatory Technical Standards on major holdings in order to provide effective guidance to the market.

Directive 2004/109/EC already considers the following to be financial instruments:

  • transferable securities;
  • options;
  • futures;
  • swaps;
  • forward rate agreements;
  • contracts for differences; and
  • any other contracts or agreements with similar economic effects which may be settled physically or in cash.

Furthermore, taking into account current technical developments on financial markets ESMA considers the following to be financial instruments:

  • irrevocable convertible and exchangeable bonds referring to already issued shares;
  • financial instruments referenced to a basket of shares or an index
  • warrants;
  • repurchase agreements;
  • rights to recall lent shares;
  • contractual buying pre-emption rights;
  • other conditional contracts or agreements than options and futures;
  • hybrid financial instruments;
  • combinations of financial instruments;
  • shareholders’ agreements having financial instruments as an underlying.

Click here for Indicative List of Financial Instruments

Click on the link above for further details.