The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued today a Communication clarifying the reporting of reference data under the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR).
Following the agreed later implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) and Regulation (MiFIR), some of the MAR provisions will be aligned to the new MiFID II timelines.
The agreement on MIFID II provides for postponement of the application date of certain provisions of MAR, in particular the Article 4 thereof until the same date. Specifically, the requirements set out under Article 4(2) and (3) will apply from 3 January 2018, whilst the application date of the requirement in Article 4(1) remains 3 July 2016.
Article 4 refers to required notifications regarding admission or removal of financial instruments data to a regulated market or MTF or OTF and respective reference. Given the delay to MiFID II and MiFIR until 2018, the concept of OTF will only then enter into force, so that the reporting obligation under Article 4 (1) of MAR will only apply in relation to regulated markets and MTF. Furthermore, the requirements set out under Article 4(2) and (3) will apply from 3 January 2018 given that the fulfilling the reporting requirements set out therein would basically be in line with the new MiFID II/MiFIR requirements. Since the legal requirements for building the appropriate IT systems that would be used for both regulations are not in place yet due to the MiFID II delay, submitting data in accordance with Article 4 of MAR would not be possible either.
The ESMA statement and the full clarification are available here.