On 14 April 2014, the Council of the European Union announced that it had adopted new European legislation on insider dealing and market abuse. The new legislation is made up of a regulation to enhance the protection of investors by extending the scope of the current market abuse directive (which will be replaced) to include financial instruments traded on all types of trading platforms as well as OTC-traded instruments, and a directive which establishes a framework for criminal sanctions for market participants that are caught abusing the markets. It is expected that the new legislation will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union in June. Following that, the European Commission will have two years to adopt implementing Level 2 legislation under the Regulation and member states will have to transpose the Directive into national law within the same period.
The press release is available at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ecofin/142206.pdf.
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