Last week the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued this statement which announced that MIFID II position limits will no longer be applied to cash settled commodity derivatives. Position limits will still apply to those contracts with either a physically settled underlying or an agricultural underlying. This statement effectively brings forward some aspects of the changes proposed to the UK MIFID II regime in a consultation that opened recently (see here). Exchange based limits are expected to be kept to, as are anti abuse regulations such as MAR.

The EU applied a similar approach to the changes that will be applied next year to the EU MIFID II as per the “quick fix” package, which significantly reduces the number of limits (see here).

ESMA has also announced here that the DTCC EMIR Trade Repository has been fined €408,000 for breaches related to data confidentiality, accuracy of data ad the granting of access to regulators.