The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a Briefing on the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) as part of its efforts to raise industry awareness and facilitate compliance with the LEI requirements under MiFID II ahead of its 3 January 2018 launch.

ESMA expects market participants to take all necessary steps to ensure full compliance with the LEI requirements under MiFID II. Based on its previous experience with EMIR reporting, ESMA urges reporting entities not to delay in addressing this important matter, as advance preparation will help in avoiding backlogs and ensuring that all market participants are ready for the new regime.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published its 2018 Work Programme (WP), which sets out its priorities and areas of focus for 2018 in support of its mission to enhance investor protection and promote stable and orderly financial markets.

For 2018, the key areas of focus under ESMA’s activities of supervisory convergence, assessing risks, single rulebook and direct supervision will be:

• Providing guidance and promoting the consistent application of MiFID II and MiFIR by market participants and National Competent Authorities (NCAs);

• Ensuring the quality, integration, usability and transparency of the data that ESMA collects;

• Contributing to the development of Level 2 measures in relation to the revised Prospectus regime; AND

• Enhancing the effectiveness and lasting impact of supervisory activities at individual credit rating agencies (CRA) and trade repositories (TR) level.

The overall budget for 2018 is expected to be €42,051,386 with a projected staff of 232.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) have published their joint Guidelines to assess the suitability of members of management bodies and key function holders.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA)’s latest report on Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities No. 2, 2017 (TRV) identifies high asset price valuations as the major risk for European financial markets in the second half of 2017. The main risk drivers are uncertainties around geo-political developments, the resilience of economic growth as well as debt sustainability. Market and credit risks, as a result of geopolitical, growth and debt concerns, continued to be very high, while liquidity and contagion risks remained stable but high. Operational risk remains elevated but the outlook is now negative due to heightened concerns around cyber security. Overall, ESMA’s risk assessment for the second half of 2017 remains unchanged from 1H17.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published three Opinions setting out sector-specific principles in the areas of investment firms, investment management and secondary markets, aimed at fostering consistency in authorisation, supervision and enforcement related to the relocation of entities, activities and functions from the United Kingdom .

The opinions, building on the general opinion issued in May, are practical tools to support supervisory convergence in the context of requests from UK financial market participants seeking to relocate to the EU27. They are addressed to national competent authorities (NCAs) and are relevant for market participants considering relocating.

They provide guidance to NCAs aimed at ensuring a consistent interpretation of the requirements relating to authorisation, supervision and enforcement in order to avoid the development of regulatory and supervisory arbitrage risks.