Last Tuesday 4th August 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority – the EU’s securities markets regulator – announced in a notice, a ‘Call for expression of interest’ in order to renew the composition of the Consultative Working Group (CWG) of the ESMA Secondary Markets Standing Committee (SMSC), as the two-year term of the current CWG is due to expire.
The selection is open to any individual from an organization playing a critical role for the financial markets within the European Union (EU). ESMA aims to ensure that the composition is well balanced with 18 members chosen from the following areas: “financial services’ intermediaries; market infrastructure providers (including trading venues, CCPs and connectivity providers); issuers; proprietary traders, including algo/HFT traders; institutional investors; non-financial counterparties; data services providers; and, representatives of consumer associations or non-governmental organisations, retail investor associations, as well as academics.”
The CWG is primarily responsible for advising and assisting the SMSC on matters related to technical standards submitted to the European Commission (EC). Subsequently, the SMSC is responsible for undertaking ESMA’s work in relation to the structure, transparency and efficiency of secondary markets for financial instruments, including trading venues and the OTC markets. The notice highlights that the SMSC focuses on matters relating to preparing technical standards, guidelines and recommendations in relation to a number of legislative acts which include (but is not limited to): “Pre-trade and post-trade transparency requirements for equity, equity-like and non-equity instruments, provisions governing access to CCPs, trading venues and benchmarks, market structures and microstructures […]”
The SMSC has a significant role to play in order to build a common supervisory landscape, coupled with the aligned supervisory approaches and practices within the EU.
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