BETTER FINANCE calls on EU legislators to stop helping the expansion of large (mostly non-EU) dark traders and to protect retail investors instead

10 February 2023 | As EU policymakers continue their negotiations on the MiFIR review, BETTER FINANCE is increasingly alarmed that the regulation could severely hurt retail investors, by putting in ...
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Great Returns for Great Values: the “Gateway to Responsible Investing” goes LIVE

BETTER FINANCE is excited to announce the launch of its much-needed “Gateway to Responsible Investing”, responding to the lack of independent, transparent and clear information on how to invest in ...
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/ Press Releases, Sustainabe Finance

Hampered by fragmented and costly intermediated processes, less than half of European individual shareholders were able to exercise their voting rights at AGMs in 2022

For a third year in a row, a study by BETTER FINANCE and DSW still points to considerable barriers to shareholder engagement as the Shareholder Rights Directive II fails to ...
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Potential ban on inducements reduced to false choice between “advice gap” and “biased advice”

In response to warnings about an “advice gap” if inducements – or rather sales commissions – were to be banned, BETTER FINANCE stresses that there can be no “advice gap” ...
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EU Council set to backtrack on retail investor protection and CMU, contrary to SEC’s US capital markets reforms

On Wednesday 14 December, the United Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed Regulation Best Execution, seeking to establish a best execution regulatory framework mandating that securities brokers and dealers execute ...
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BETTER FINANCE Concerned About the European Commission Abandoning the Necessary and Urgent Audit Reform Announced in November 2021

In June 2020, the Wirecard scandal unraveled, generating unprecedented retail investor detriment worth about €20 billion. BETTER FINANCE reacted, labelling it an “outrageous case of corporate governance, external auditing and ...
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Council of the EU is the Last Hurdle to Tackling Conflicts of Interests in Retail Investment Services

17 November 2022 – The struggle against conflicts of interests and to deliver an adequate, high level of “retail” investor protection now hinges on the positions of representatives of the ...
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BETTER FINANCE Applauds and Supports Proposed Ban on Sales Commissions Paid to Retail Distributors of Investment Products

BETTER FINANCE considers the recent proposal to ban “inducements” (commissions) in “retail” investment services to be a very significant milestone in investor protection and firmly urges EU Member States to ...
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Background: “EU Pensions seem doomed with ‘Financial Repression’ as the only game in town”

Eurozone inflation mushroomed from 3.4% to 10% in one year, further deepening Europe’s cost-of-living crisis, yet the best the European Central Bank (ECB) could muster is a late and timid ...
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BETTER FINANCE Pensions Report 2022: It will get much worse for EU Savers before it even has a chance to get better

For 10 years now BETTER FINANCE points to the often-poor real net returns of long-term and pension savings (see the 2022 Edition of the Real Return) across a large number ...
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