In August 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA") published a consultation paper on the early implementation of the Transparency Directive's requirements for reports on payments to governments by issuers in the extractive or logging industries under the Transparency Directive. The consultation paper was followed by the FCA's DTRs (Reports on Payments to Governments) Instrument 2014 which came into force on 22 December 2014. On 2 January 2015, the FCA published its response to the consultation and the final text of the 2014 Instrument.

In its response statement, the FCA has confirmed the following items:

  • The FCA will not impose a prescribed reporting format that must be used for Companies House filings and Regulatory Information Service ("RIS") announcements, as the revised Transparency Directive does not specify the format for reports on payments to governments.
  • The FCA considers a report on payments to governments which is prepared in accordance with the UK Reports on Payments to Governments Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3209) (which implement Chapter 10 of the EU Accounting Directive (2013/34/EU) in the UK) to be in compliance with the Accounting Directive. However, the requirement for payments to governments on a consolidated basis cannot be met through the Accounting Directive. The policy statement does not provide any guidance on consolidation under the Transparency Directive at this stage.
  • The FCA will treat reports on payments to governments as regulated information under the Transparency Directive. The FCA will consider further whether a RIS announcement containing a link to the report on the company's website should satisfy the publication requirements in relation to payments to governments.
  • The FCA will apply the new country-by-country reporting requirements to listed companies who are required to comply with periodic financial reporting requirements as if they were an issuer for the purposes of the DTRs, and to issuers of securitised derivatives who the FCA considers should comply with periodic financial reporting requirements as if they were an issuer of debt securities as defined in the DTRs.
  • Decisions on equivalence within the Accounting Directive framework remain outside the scope of the Transparency Directive.

A copy of FCA's policy statement is available at:

http://www.fca.org.uk/static/documents/policy-statements/ps15-01.pdf.

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