Welcome to Legal Shorts, a short briefing on some of the week’s developments in the financial services industry. If you would like to discuss any of the points we raise below, please contact me or one of our other lawyers. Claire Cummings 020 7585 1406 claire.cummings@cummingslaw.com www.cummingslaw.com

1.
Welcome to Legal Shorts, a short briefing on some of the week’s developments in the financial services
industry.
Listen to this week's Legal Shorts on CLTV by going to http://vimeo.com/cummingslaw
If you would like to discuss any of the points we raise below, please contact me or one of our other lawyers.
Claire Cummings
020 7585 1406
claire.cummings@cummingslaw.com
www.cummingslaw.com
ESMA update on waivers from MiFID pre-trade transparency requirements
On 26 August 2015, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published an
updated version of its waiver document that sets out its assessment of applications for waivers
from pre-trade transparency requirements under MiFID. The waiver document is aimed at
competent authorities under MiFID to ensure that, in their supervisory activities, their actions
converge with the opinions provided by ESMA. The examples are also intended to provide clarity
on the MiFID requirements for pre-trade transparency. In the updated waiver document there is
one new ESMA opinion that relates to the submission of large-in-scale orders with two different
price limits. The new opinion is written in red.
FCA and Complaints Handling
The FCA has published its final rules on complaints handling, which are expected to sit side by
side with current good practice we expect to see amongst all firms. The changes to the rules on
complaints handling include: (i) extending the “next business day rule”, which requires firms to
handle complaints less formally without sending a final response letter, to the close of three
business days; (ii) requiring firms to report all complaints; (iii) raising consumer awareness of the
ombudsman service by requiring firms to send a “summary resolution communication”; and (iii)
preventing firms from charging existing customers premium telephone rates. Mobile phones are
included in the definition of compliant numbers. The FCA states that firms are expected to
identify and categorise complaints and ensure that responsible members of staff are engaged at the
right stage, and that all complaints should be handled fairly, adding that they will take appropriate
action where this does not happen.

2. MiFID II timeline – September 2015
ESMA remains expected to submit certain final implementing and regulatory technical standards
(ITS and RTS) to the Commission next month. This deadline had previously been earlier, but
was delayed until September 2015 for certain technical standards. In May 2015, ESMA and the
Commission agreed that the Commission would conduct an early legal review of the draft
technical standards and that this would constitute an additional step and cause a delay in the
submission of certain final draft technical standards under MiFID II (among other initiatives) by
two months, ie from July 2015 to September 2015. The FCA’s MiFID II conference will then be
held in October 2015 and the FCA is due to publish its main consultation paper on implementing
MiFID II in December 2015.
Start date for the FCA’s new Director of Supervision
Megan Butler will joining the FCA on 1 September 2015, on a one year secondment from the
Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), to take the role of Director of Supervision -Investment,
Wholesale and Specialist. Megan is currently Executive Director of International Banks
Directorate at the PRA. Also next month, Martin Wheatley is to stand down as Chief Executive
with effect from September 12 2015 though he will continue to act as an adviser to the FCA
Board until 31 January 2016.
Update on new FCA online Handbook
The FCA’s online Handbook will be launched on 29 August. The FCA say that the new site has
a cleaner layout and easier navigation, a timeline to show when rules change, an option for users
to add favourites and build their own tailored Handbook, improved search functionality and
glossary definitions displayed in a pop-up window. The FCA will welcome feedback on the new
site, including ideas for future improvements, which can be sent directly to them by emailing
handbookproduction@fca.org.uk once the site goes live.
ESMA publishes responses to its Discussion Paper on PRIIPS Key Information Document
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published the responses received to
the Joint Committee Discussion Paper on Key Information Document for PRIIPS. The paper was
split into one section on risk and another section on costs, and participants asked to answer 99
questions. Responses were given by a number of trade bodies in EEA member states, as well as
individual investment firms. The responses themselves concern a number of issues, including the
possible methodologies to determine and display risks and the performance and costs in the Key
Information Document (KID).
LCH.Clearnet comment on margining
The clearing house for the London Stock Exchange, LCH.Clearnet, has published a white paper
calling for more uniformity in regulatory standards over portfolio margining, saying that while
current regulatory standards allow margining across portfolio assets which are significantly and
reliably correlated, they do not “specify the meaning of significance and reliability in exact
quantative terms.”

3. http://safemailer.safeserve.com/admin/index.php?Page=Newsletters&Action=View&id=4710[28/08/2015 14:34:15]
Cummings
Tel: + 44 20 7585 1406
Mob: + 44 7734 057 327
www.cummingslaw.com
28 August 2015