This blog is now back after an unexpected “outage” due to unforeseen circumstances.

Last Monday saw Steven Maijoor, chair of ESMA, make comments, reported here on the Reuters website, that the proposed one year delay of MiFID, to January 2018, is not enough. Despite support from ESMA, the European Parliament, the European Commission and other bodies no official ratification has taken place. The slow pace of ratification, not only of the delay but of the various Regulatory Technical Standards mean that the work required to implement MiFID is hampered by uncertainty. The minutes of the latest FCA MiFID II Round table, published here, indicate that the uncertainty is causing many smaller firms to push back their implementation efforts.

In the energy and commodity trading sector, the lack of finality over the ancillary activity tests add to the uncertainty. best practice is to push ahead with as much effort as is feasible, using the information now available. However this is not always easy when the rules are far from final.