Brussels, 22 May 2020 – With the current crisis calling for a tightening of the link between employees and their companies, especially in the case of SMEs, BETTER FINANCE’s member organisation EFES, the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership, launched a concrete proposal on how to co-opt Employee Share Ownership (ESO) to help fund companies
Summary: General comment The review of the MiFID II framework is timely and should be coordinated with the other ongoing actions and policy areas, i.e. PRIIPs and the work done in the Forum on the Future of the Capital Markets Union. In addition, to ensure a level playing field, the European Commission should also adopt
Brussels, 4 May 2020 – On 1 April 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its advice on “inducements” (and on the disclosure of costs and charges) under “MiFID II”, one of the main EU investor protection directives up for review this year, pushing the issue off into the future by encouraging the
The heads of European and Member State organisations representing individual shareholders across Europe sent an Open Letter to the European Commission opposing lobbying attempts by powerful financial intermediaries to postpone the implementation of the Shareholder Rights Directive II. BETTER FINANCE, Asociata Utilizatorilor Romani de Servicii Financiare (AURSF), Associacao dos Investidores e Analistas Técnicos do Mercado de
On 3 April the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its final guidelines on performance fees in investment funds, applicable to Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) and certain types of Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs). These guidelines aim to provide rules for fund managers when charging performance fees to retail investors as
BETTER FINANCE welcomes this timely assessment and evidence gathering on the application of the new MiFID II rules on disclosure for inducements and costs. However, it is very unfortunate that, in a field that is crucial to investor protection and designed to enhance consumer experience and trust in financial services, the majority of questions are
Brussels, 23 April 2020 – The necessary health, quarantine and social distancing measures taken to fight the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, are taking their toll on economies around the world. This strategy – crucial to the fight – coupled with monetary and budgetary expansions of unseen magnitudes, will have lasting and damaging economic consequences due to
The creation a of well-designed Ecolabel is key to addressing the very real issue of existing national labels being granted to products that do not comply with existing investor protection and disclosure rules. First and foremost, the Ecolabel should acquire and retain the trust of EU citizens, since they are the main source of long-term
Dear Ms Tingali, Dear Members of the ECON Committee, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”. (Ezra Solomon, Stanford Professor of Finance) We are writing to you in our capacity as executives of major EU public interest organisations working on financial services and representing the interests of the 190 million
BETTER FINANCE continues to express deep concern about the unwanted “side-effects” of the MiFID 2 regulatory framework on “lit” equity trading in the EU. Below is the summary response to the ESMA Public Consultation on the review of the MiFID 2 and MiFIR transparency regime for equity and equity-like instruments, the double volume cap mechanism