On June 12th 2014 Regulation No 596/2014 on market abuse ("MAR") and Directive 2014/57/EU on criminal sanctions for market abuse ("CSMAD") were published in the Official Journal of the European Union. MAR shall be applicable from July 2016.

Member States have two years to transpose the CSMAD into their national law.

MAR and CSMAD aim to update and strengthen the existing market abuse framework to ensure market integrity and investor protection, in particular by:

  • extending the scope of the current market abuse regime to new markets and trading strategies;
  • explicitly banning the manipulation of benchmarks (such as LIBOR);
  • introducing offences of attempted insider dealing and market manipulation;
  • reinforcing the investigative and administrative sanctioning powers of national competent authorities; and
  • establishing a harmonised regime of minimum criminal and administrative sanctions across the EU Member States for market abuse offences.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.