The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has fined Moody’s Deutschland GmbH (Moody’s Germany) €750,000 and Moody’s Investors Service Limited (Moody’s UK) €490,000, and issued a public notice, for two negligent breaches of the Credit Rating Agencies Regulation (CRAR).

ESMA found that Moody’s Germany and Moody’s UK negligently committed two infringements of the CRAR regarding their public announcement of certain ratings and their public disclosure of methodologies used to determine those ratings. These failures concern nineteen ratings issued between June 2011 and December 2013 for nine supranational entities including the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund, the European Stability Mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Union.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU supervisor of trade repositories (TRs), has registered Bloomberg Trade Repository Limited as a TR under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), with effect from 7 June 2017. Bloomberg Trade Repository Limited is based in the United Kingdom and covers the following derivative asset classes: commodities, credit, foreign exchange, equities and interest rates.

1. ESMA is required to play an active role in building a common supervisory culture by promoting common supervisory approaches and practices among nationally appointed Sectoral Competent Authorities (‘SCAs’).

2. The purpose of this supervisory briefing is to provide guidance to SCAs in relation to the application of Articles 8c and 8d of the CRA Regulation and promote a common supervisory approach and enforcement of these Articles. In this regard, the Supervisory Briefing includes the following:

1. A Common Supervisory Approach as to which issuers and related third parties are covered by Article 8c and 8d; and,

2. A Standard Form for documentation in accordance with article 8d.

3. The common supervisory approach will assist SCAs as well as issuers and related third parties by clearly establishing who should be prioritised for supervision and enforcement under these Articles.

4. The Standard Form will assist SCAs by guaranteeing standardised and consistent data across different issuers and related third parties. It will also assist issuers and related third parties by providing clarity as to how they may meet their regulatory obligations under these Articles and simplify their internal processes by removing the need to develop in-house templates for documenting compliance under Article 8d.

5. The Supervisory Briefing will be published on ESMA’s website and on the websites of the nationally appointed SCAs.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a consultation paper (CP) on updating its Guidelines on the application of the endorsement regime under the CRA (Credit Rating Agencies) Regulation. Endorsement is a regime under the CRA Regulation, which allows credit ratings issued by a third-country CRA, and endorsed by an EU CRA, to be used for regulatory purposes in the EU. A credit rating that has been endorsed is considered to have been issued by the endorsing EU CRA. The endorsement regime is available for CRAs of systemic importance with global networks of affiliates.

Endorsement is one of two regimes provided in the CRA Regulation that allow credit ratings issued in a third country to be used for regulatory purposes in the EU – the other being equivalence/certification. Article 21(3) of the CRA Regulation requires ESMA to issue and update guidelines on the application of the endorsement regime specified under Article 4(3) of the same Regulation. This Consultation Paper proposes to update the previously issued 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement.
The proposed update of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement is mainly driven by the need to reflect the changes to Articles 6-12 and Annex I introduced by CRA 3, which will enter into force for the purposes of equivalence and endorsement on 1 June 2018. On that basis, ESMA has to update the Methodological Framework on which ESMA relies for assessing a third-country legal and supervisory framework for the purposes of endorsement and equivalence. This Methodological Framework is provided in Annex II of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement. By 1 June 2018, ESMA should also have completed a reassessment of all the previously assessed third-country legal and regulatory frameworks against the new requirements based on the updated Methodological Framework (provided in Annex III).

ESMA has taken this opportunity to reassess its approach to endorsement more broadly, based on the supervisory experience acquired since the adoption of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement. The proposed changes and clarification of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement focus in particular on ESMA’s understanding of points (b), (c), (d), and (e) of Article 4(3) of the CRA Regulation.
Furthermore, some parts of the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement relate to the establishment of ESMA, the initial registration of CRAs and various transitional arrangements. The proposed updated Guidelines on Endorsement do not include these parts, as they are no longer relevant. Finally, some information in the 2011 Guidelines on Endorsement was not addressed to market participants but referred to ESMA’s internal processes. This information has also been excluded from the proposed updated guidelines on Endorsement, but is, for context, summarised in Section 4 of this Consultation Paper.