Final report : on draft Regulatory Technical Standards on major shareholdings and an indicative list of financial instruments subject to notification requirements under the revised Transparency Directive

Reasons for publication: Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 2004 amended by Directive 2013/50/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2013 (herein after the “Transparency Directive” or “TD”) requires ESMA to develop draft regulatory technical standards (“RTS”) on major shareholdings. The TD furthermore mandates ESMA to establish an indicative list of financial instruments that are subject to notification requirements according to Article 13 (1) of the TD.While developing the draft RTS and establishing the above mentioned indicative list of financial instruments, ESMA consulted stakeholders by way of a Consultation Paper (a “CP”)ESMA/2014/300). Contents:This Final Report contains a summary of the feedback from the public consultation as well as the changes to the draft RTS and the indicative list which ESMA proposes based onthis feedback. To a large extent the structure of the Final Report follows the structure of the Consultation Paper with the first part dealing with each of the four mandates given to ESMA to develop draft RTS and the second part dealing with the indicative list of financial instruments. The annexes of the Final Report consist of the questions asked in the Consultation Paper (Annex I), the legislative mandates for ESMA to develop draft RTS (Annex II), a revised cost-benefit analysis (Annex III), the advice submitted by the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group (the “SMSG”) (Annex IV), the revised draft RTS (Annex V) and the indicative list of financial instruments (Annex VI). Next steps: This Final Report will be submitted to the European Commission (the “Commission”) by 27 November 2014. The Commission has three months to decide whether to endorse ESMA’s draft RTS.