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On 8 May 2022, OFAC issued a determination (Determination) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 14071 (issued on 8 April 2022), “Prohibitions Related to Certain Accounting, Trust and Corporate Formation, and Management Consulting Services,” prohibiting:
“The exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States
Read time: 5 minutes
On 2 April 2020, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published guidelines on legislative and non-legislative moratoria on loan repayments in light of COVID-19 (EBA/GL/2020/2) (the Guidelines). The Guidelines were updated by a supplementary supervisory statement addressing the treatment of securitised exposures subject to payment moratoria, issued on 22 April 2020.
The supplementary supervisory statement addressing securitised exposures establish where legislative and non-legislative moratoria should not trigger default or forbearance classifications for regulatory capital purposes and where actions taken under payment moratoria will not be considered a breach of the prohibition of ‘implicit support’.
Continue Reading EBA publishes additional supervisory measures on legislative and non-legislative moratoria on loan repayments in light of COVID-19
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On 7 April, the Bank of England gave financial firms a hard deadline of 14 July for submitting their contingency plans for Brexit, which passed last Friday.
These plans were required to contemplate a variety of scenarios including the prospect of a “hard Brexit”, which as the UK and EU governments
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Earlier this month the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (the ‘PRA’) wrote to all UK companies undertaking cross-border activities between the UK and the EU under passporting arrangements, requesting a summary of their Brexit contingency plans.
The letter continues the regulator’s focus on ensuring firms have robust measures and business strategies in place to respond to market turbulence.
Continue Reading BREXIT- Hand-over your contingency plans…
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Credit rating agencies (‘CRAs’) that operate in the EU will be interested to hear that on 30 March 2017, ESMA published an update to its Questions & Answers (Q&A) on the ‘CRA’ Regulation (Regulation 1060/2009, as amended in 2011 and 2013). The CRA Regulation requires CRAs within the EU to be registered and to comply with requirements relating to their independence and avoidance of conflicts of interest, their methodologies, their disclosures and their approach to sovereign debt. It also contains requirements on parties involved in securitisations in respect of the rating of structured finance instruments.
Continue Reading ESMA clarifies timelines for publication of credit ratings and rating outlooks
It’s been barely six weeks since the EMIR trade reporting obligations came into effect on 12 February and, as the regulatory dust begins to settle, parties to derivative transactions are still in the process of assessing their duties under the new regime. In the lead up to the February deadline, bank and securities firms were busy implementing their client outreach programmes whilst we were busy putting out client alerts and blogging about the new requirements under EMIR. We continue to help clients with their questions on this significant change to the EU regulatory landscape.
Two aspects of the new trade reporting regime in particular repay some close attention to avoid potential trip-ups. First, the rules relating to what has been termed ‘backloading’, or, in other words, the requirement to transaction report historic trades. After some uncertainty in the lead up to implementation, the requirements are now clearer. Broadly, counterparties need to ensure that all historic trades that were either ‘live’ on 12 August 2012 (the date EMIR came into force), or subsequently became live prior to 12 February 2014 (the date the reporting requirements came into force), are reported. For these trades, the deadline for reporting will range from just one day to a period of three years after the reporting obligations became effective, depending on the date of the trade and, if applicable, its termination date. Our client alert sets out these timeframes in more detail.
EMIR’s trade reporting obligations come into effect on 12 February and counterparties to derivative transactions are currently scrambling to ensure they have all the appropriate systems in place to ensure compliance. For large financial institutions, this has already involved many months of hard work and, even still, many are not optimistic about meeting next month’s deadline. At the other end of the spectrum, the administrative burden on one-off or low volume commercial counterparties should be relatively light, and ensuring that the reporting obligations are covered not therefore too taxing.
What then of SPVs – which are neither operational goliaths like their derivative counterparties nor autonomous commercial entities capable of assessing the implications on cost, resources and time of each option open to them?
Continue Reading You Don’t Need EMIRacle – Trade Reporting for SPVs Made Easy
On 4 September 2013, the European Commission published a draft regulation on the regulation of European money market funds. Money market funds are important investors in certain types of securitisation, particularly asset backed commercial paper, and the draft Regulation includes some detailed provisions dealing with this relationship. This is explained in the recitals: “Due the fact that during the crisis certain securitisations were particularly unstable, it is necessary to impose maturity limits and quality criteria on the underlying assets”. The limitations imposed are such that the only types of securitisation which are eligible are those with underlying assets consisting of short term corporate debts, such as trade receivables. Assets linked to the acquisition or financing of services or goods by consumers (such as personal loans, auto loans, credit card debts and residential mortgages) are expressly excluded. The draft regulation also requires that the underlying corporate debts be “of high credit quality and liquid”.
Continue Reading Regulation of Money Market Funds and Securitisation
Those issuers, corporate services providers, collateral managers, servicers and special servicers that regularly submit debt announcements on the Irish Stock Exchange will know how straightforward and quick it is to submit. For those that don’t, at present this process involves simply sending a copy of the notice or announcement to the email address announcements@ise.ie and the publication is free of charge if a Word version of the notice is sent.
Continue Reading Irish Stock Exchange announcements – Its all change at the Exchange!