Prospectus Requirements To Be More Crowd Friendly

Under the new Prospectus Regulation adopted by the EU Parliament, the scope of exemptions from the need for onerous disclosure requirements will be expanded from late 2017. 

The regulation won't apply to offers of securities (shares and bonds etc) to fewer than 350 (previously 150) natural or legal persons per member state or no more than 4,000 natural or legal persons in the EU who aren't qualified investors etc; or where the total being raised in the EU over a 12 month period is less than EUR1 million (previously EUR500,000). 

Each member state can exempt offers from the prospectus requirement where the amount being raised over 12 months in the EU does not exceed EUR5 million (previously EUR10 million) - though there are measures to confine the offer to the relevant member state.  

Other rules are aimed at making the amount of information disclosed more proportionate. 

Boring But Important: Changes To Money Laundering Regulation

The UK government is consulting on important changes required to implement the fourth EU directive on anti-money laundering (which is still subject to change in the meantime) and changes to wire transfer regulation. Responses are due by 10 November.

This is not the only consultation paper issued recently, so it will be a week or so before I add further summary detail below!

The Next Revolution in UK #Payments: Non-bank PSPs and The RTGS

The Bank of England is consulting on the reform of its Retail Gross Settlement System ("RTGS"), which processes half a trillion pounds worth of transactions a day covering almost every payment in the UK economy — from salaries to invoices, from car purchases to retail sales, pensions and investments. 

The system is 20 years old and needs to be reinvented in way that is more flexible and cost-effective. It must interoperate with a wider range of payment systems on a 24x7 basis and better support the increasingly rapid evolution of various new payment methods in the retail, commercial and financial markets.

Responses can be made online by 7 November 2016.