Article 39b(2) of the CRA Regulation states that the European Commission shall adopt a report by end 2014 – after receiving ESMA’s technical advice – on the appropriateness of the development of a European creditworthiness assessment for sovereign debt.In its request for advice, the...

One of the objectives of the CRA Regulation is to increase competition in the markets for credit ratings by encouraging issuers to use smaller credit rating agencies. To this end, Article 8d(1) of the CRA Regulation states that where issuers or related third parties intend to appoint at least...

We analyse the potentially vulnerable and systemically relevant financial intermediation chain established by hedge funds and prime brokers. Our dataset covers the 306 largest global hedge funds and their prime brokers over the period July 2001 to December 2011. The study illustrates that hedge...

Starting from an overview of the political background of the Kosovo issue, rooted in Serb and Albanian history, the paper then describes the main features of the current situation: "nothing more than autonomy" from one side, "nothing less than independence" for the other. Against this...

For the purposes of this advice, ESMA provides its views based on the quantitative information contained in the CEREP public database and on information publicly disclosed by credit rating agencies registered with ESMA.Additionally, ESMA’s advice has been informed by its first supervisory...