On 31 May 2023, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced that the amended Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) 1 and 2, under MiFIR, will start applying on 5 June 2023. Some of the amendments will have an impact on the transparency calculations for equity, equity-like and non-equity instruments.
In particular:
- The pre-trade large in scale (LIS) threshold for exchange traded funds will change from €1,000,000 to €3,000,000 and the smallest post-trade LIS thresholds from €10,000,000 to €15,000,000.
- The application date of the quarterly liquidity assessment of bonds should now be the third Monday of the respective publication month of February, May, August and November. The new application date will apply from the publication of the quarterly assessment on 1 August 2023.
- The application dates for the systemic internaliser (SI) will not change, therefore, the SI test should be performed by investment firms by the 15th of the respective publication month of February, May, August and November.
- For the annual calculation for non-equity instruments, the amended RTS 2 specifies the segmentation criteria to be used to define the classes of instruments for which the calculations have to be performed. ESMA notes that the implementation of these provisions may require IT changes of FITRS and the provision of data by reporting entities should now be done accordingly. ESMA plans to perform the first annual calculations with those amendments and the new application date under the amended RTS 2 (first Monday of June) by 30 April 2024.
- In terms of the annual calculation for equity and equity-like instruments, ESMA will perform the first annual calculations with the new application date (first Monday of April) under the amended RTS 1 by 1 March 2024.