MyComplianceOffice Blog

Managing a financial trading control room involves balancing a wide variety of tasks. To comply with stringent rules and regulations, all deals must be carefully reviewed, the flow of information strictly managed, and an overarching focus on preventing conflicts of interest must be a constant. Without effective processes, a single deal can move slowly through the pipeline—and those delays aren’t beneficial for the firm’s bottom line. 

The European Market Abuse Regulations (MAR) have been in effect since July of 2016. Recent priorities published by regulators in the UK and across Europe demonstrate that MAR is hardly old news, remaining a consistent priority since its inception. And regulatory enforcement shows that even six years in, firms are still struggling to stay compliant with MAR regulations and the flow of material nonpublic information (MNPI) across their organizations.

During 2020, many factors have shaped the regulations and enforcement actions to maintain market integrity and place the interests of clients ahead of firms and individuals. In addition to the challenges faced by compliance and risk departments, the number of people trading worldwide has risen, pressuring regulators and compliance departments to quickly act to monitor conflicts of interest and prevent individuals from taking market advantage.

2020 has been a scary year and there have been a few things that have spooked the most experienced compliance officer. Covid-19 compliance, regulatory updates and deadlines,  and a few large fines and sanctions haunted firms throughout the year. In this blog, we share our thoughts about recent events that unnerved normal compliance operations and should be considered as we move towards 2021.

On September 23rd, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a set of outcomes and recommendations on the Market Abuse Regulation. The report has the objective to review the functionalities of MAR since its implementation in 2016 and draft suggestions to improve the regulation. The report is based on a 2019 consultation and covers buy-back programmes, the delayed disclosure of inside information, the usefulness of insider lists, managers’ transactions, the retention period of personal data among other topics.