The House Plenum has voted in favor of amending the Law on Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets in order to achieve harmonisation with an article of the European directive on markets in financial instruments.
The directive aims to enhance transparency in markets, protect investors, supervise and account for, regulate new forms of trading and technology, as well as restrict the sale of complex and inappropriate products and conflicts of interest.
Regulations which facilitate the creation and operation of a central data table/consolidated trade record for financial instruments within the EU, introduce mandatory data contribution from providers to the administrator of the consolidated trade record and impose strict quality standards and redefine the institution of the systematic internaliser have now been introduced. This is an investment firm that carries out transactions for its own account on a systematic basis outside an organized market, while the definition of qualitative criteria replaces an older model of quantitative criteria, which was deemed to be administratively too burdensome for businesses,
At the same time, the new regulations enhance transparency in trading halt mechanisms, as regulated exchanges must be able to temporarily halt or restrict trading in the event of significant price fluctuations and disclose the reasons behind such actions, as well as the technical features used.
In parallel, they prohibit investment firms from receiving any payment or non-monetary benefit from third parties for executing or forwarding client orders on a specific execution platform, a regulation that applies to both retail clients and "professional" clients who have chosen to waive the level of protection provided to retail clients.
(Source: InBusinessNews)
