Deutsche Boerse
(BRUSSELS) – The EU institutions reached provisional agreement Thursday on a package to make EU public capital markets more attractive for EU companies and easier for companies to list on European stock exchanges.
The agreement is expected to cut red tape and costs to help European companies of all sizes – in particular smaller companies – access more sources of financing.
This will “reduce the administrative burden for companies and contribute to making EU capital markets more attractive fully in line with the objectives of the capital markets union,” said Belgium’s finance minister Vincent Van Peteghem, for the EU presidency. “. It is important that we continue to encourage companies to list on the stock exchange while at the same time ensuring high levels of investor protection and market integrity throughout Union.”
The agreement strikes a balance between alleviating ongoing disclosure requirements and maintaining market integrity and efficiency in the market abuse framework by narrowing down the scope of the disclosure obligation in case of protracted processes (multi-stage events). The immediate disclosure obligation no longer covers the intermediate steps of that process, instead, the issuers only need to disclose inside information related to the event that is completing the protracted process.
It also alleviates investment research rules in order to increase the level of research on SMEs in the EU. This informs potential investors about the prospect of investing in SMEs and improves the visibility of listed issuers.
Under the agreement, investment firms must ensure that the issuer-sponsored research they distribute is produced in compliance with the EU code of conduct. The agreement also allows the re-bundling of payments for research and execution of orders.
Council and Parliament also reached a provisional agreement on the directive on multiple-vote share structures for companies seeking admission to trading of their shares on an SME growth market.
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