Welcome to the monthly capital markets update, a briefing from our capital markets practice area rounding up the month’s regulatory developments within the equity and debt capital markets and looking ahead to future developments.
Malta Update
There were updates from a Maltese regulatory perspective for the month of January 2025.
European Union Update
UPDATE NUMBER 01/2025/01
ESMA launched a Consultation Paper on the Technical Advice on Listing Act Implications concerning MAR and MiFID II.
The Listing Act package was published in the Official Journal on 14 November 2024. On 6 June 2024, ESMA received a request for technical advice from the Commission on a range of topics. With regard to MAR, the request for technical advice related on the following points:
- A non-exhaustive list of final events or final circumstances in protracted processes and, for each event or circumstance, the moment when it is deemed to have occurred and is to be disclosed pursuant to the new Article 17(1) of MAR;
- A non-exhaustive list of situations in which the inside information that the issuer intends to delay is in contrast with the latest public announcement or other type of communication by the issuer on the same matter to which the inside information refers, as referred to in Article 17(4)(b) of MAR;
- Trading venues with cross-border activity above 50%, along with their share turnover over the past four years, to help identify those that will be subject to the Cross Market Order Book Mechanism established by Article 25a of MAR.
UPDATE NUMBER 01/2025/02
On 08 January 2025, ESMA published the 2024 update to the ESEF XBRL Taxonomy Files and the ESEF Conformance Suite to facilitate the implementation of the European Single Electronic Format (“ESEF”) Regulation[1].
Such publication intends to assist software vendors and issuers in preparing the 2024 IFRS consolidated financial statements using the most updated version of the ESEF format.
The updated 2024 ESEF XBRL Taxonomy Files and the 2024 Conformance Suite are effective for the issuers’ Annual Financial Reports (‘AFRs’) concerning financial years beginning on or after 01 January 2024, after the entry into force of the 2024 update to the ESEF Regulation.
Issuers may alternatively use the 2022 ESEF Taxonomy Files and Conformance Suite published by ESMA in December 2022, for AFRs concerning financial years beginning on or after 01 January 2024.
[1] Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815 of 17 December 2018 supplementing Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards on the specification of a single electronic reporting format.
