The Central Bank of Ireland has conducted a “Thematic assessment on Algorithmic Trading Firms’ compliance with RTS 6 of MIFID II”. The open letter can be found here. Regulatory Technical Standard 6 contains the rules that firms engaging in algorithmic trading in Financial Instruments are expected to comply with. RTS 6 applies to firms regardless of whether they make use of the Ancillary Activity Exemption or not. The assessment found a number of deficiencies in compliance amongst the surveyed companies.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has updated their “Regulatory Initiatives Grid”, which can be found here. The grid includes a plan to run an engagement around the implementation of EMIR in the UK later this year. The second half of 2022 will see a major change to the EU EMIR, as discussed in a Final Report published by ESMA in December (see here).