EBF Position Paper on the Listing Act Proposal

03 May 2023

Listing Act – making public capital markets more attractive for EU companies and facilitating access to capital for SMEs

The EBF fully supports the CMU objective of increasing participation by European companies to Capital Markets and welcomes the proposal to simplify the EU listing regulatory framework to facilitate access to funding in public markets.

• On the Prospectus Regulation: The focus of the Prospectus Regulation should be on simplifying and streamlining content and harmonizing practices, while leaving sufficient flexibility to issuers and intermediaries to assess appropriate content and length. Moreover, a limit to the length of the prospectus could be maintained as a general recommendation, rather than as a binding rule.
• On the Market Abuse Regulation: The EBF welcomes the changes proposed by the European Commission to alleviate the Market Abuse Regulation. Specifically with reference to the issue of what constitutes an “inside information”, to the clarification of the safe-harbor nature of the market sounding procedure and to the simplification of the insider list regime for all issuers. Welcomed changes also refer to the expansion of the scope of exempted transactions during the “close period” and to the simplification of reporting and disclosure f share buybacks.
• On the Directive on Multiple-Vote Share Structures: the EBF supports the establishment of an homogeneous regime at EU level to avoid unlevel playing field across the implementation of MVR schemes.
• On Investment Research: The EBF supports a complete review of the current research regime. To foster liquidity and support the provision of research services, the unbundling rule should be permanently eliminated, and joint payment of the research should be allowed with reference to all issuers, regardless market capitalization.

 

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