The European Banking Federation supports the objective of enhancing investor protection as sought by the Level 1 Prospectus Directive. Nevertheless, it remains concerned that many aspects of the final advice will not achieve a higher level of investor protection because it puts form above substance.
The EBF wishes to state clearly that a consultation period of four weeks during summer holidays is not sufficient and therefore not acceptable when consulting market participants on a matter of such great importance for financial markets in the EU. EBF would like to request that a second consultation period be held in order for market participants to adequately express their concern. It would like also to request that the European Commission in the future ensures that adequate time is granted to stakeholders for responding to public consultations.
The technical advice if adopted in its current version would forbid the use of the base prospectus scheme for structured products and would lead to dedicated issues that need listing but are not offered to the public being off-shored. Public offered issues will be subject to significant cost increases due to paper work, translation, legal and IT developments, without any benefit to investors. Authorities will be faced with similar administrative work and cost increases without any tangible benefit for investors.
The EBF would strongly urge the Commission to allow the inclusion of risk factors or dedicated underlying in the final terms and allow changes to payouts where the adjustment does not create a wholly new product.
There are many outstanding issues that still have to be addressed by ESMA, e.g. additional information permitted to be included in the final terms. The EBF urges ESMA and the Commission to provide further guidance swiftly on specific technical issues as set out in the final advice.
Full consultation
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