Is this the time for the rise of a centralised Industry Legal Documentation Utility, to streamline the process of putting in place the legal documentation, and standardise terms to minimise the increasing concern around non-standard and commercially impactful terms, from both financial institutions themselves and the regulators?

ESMA has published their MiFID II Final Report as a result of their Consultation Paper. It consists of updates and changes to the 289 page ‘Guidelines’ which provides the industry with, amongst other things, examples and details on how to populate transaction reporting fields in certain circumstances, and a 32 page ‘Final Report’ which summarizes the resultant changes, updates and additions and includes explanations as to why industry feedback was or was not included.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that financial markets regulation has always been something of a conundrum – the markets have always been global, to a greater or lesser degree, and regulations have always been national or regional. But it does seem that today more than ever the problem is exacerbated. After the financial panic of 2008-09, every regulator and every government seemed to embark on a market reregulation binge, and managed to do it without much regard for what everyone else was doing.

Capital is a serious issue, or at least its preservation is. The crisis of ‘07/’08 exposed the financial services industry to tremendous losses to the extent that companies went bust, were taken over or bailed out by government. Ensuing inquiries concluded that excessive levels of risk had been taken in search of reward and that the risk takers were inadequately protected in terms of capital and provided for in terms of liquidity.