Corporate weekly highlights—7 October 2016

Welcome to the weekly highlights from the Lexis®PSL Corporate team for the week ending 7 October 2016, which provide news updates and a comprehensive list of dates for your diary.

This week’s edition features: the FRC consultation on revised operating procedures for reviewing corporate reporting; the Growth and Emerging Markets Committee of the IOSCO report on corporate governance practices in emerging markets; the FCA's newly published third consultation paper on the implementation of MiFID II; ESMA's newly published set of Q&As on transparency topics under MiFID II; two ESMA consultations concerning MiFID II guidelines for product governance requirements and the management bodies of market operators and data reporting services providers; the government’s announcement that it plans to repeal the European Communities Act; and the FCA’s consultation paper on remuneration in CRD firms.

Accounts and reports

FRC consults on revised operating procedures for reviewing corporate reporting

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is consulting on changes made to its Conduct Committee's operating procedures for reviewing company reports and accounts (Operating Procedures).

On 1 April 2016, changes were made to the FRC's governance and executive structures which resulted in minor amendments to the Operating Procedures. This consultation concerns subsequent, more extensive changes.

Comments and feedback are due by 4 January 2017.

Corporate governance

IOSCO report on emerging markets corporate governance

The Growth and Emerging Markets Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has published a report on corporate governance practices in emerging markets countries, benchmarking them against the G20/Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Principles of Corporate Governance (the OECD Principles).

The report finds a general alignment between emerging markets regulatory frameworks and the OECD Principles and broad agreement the steps that regulators need to take to improve board composition, remuneration and incentive structures, and risk management and internal controls in their jurisdictions.

The OECD Principles provide guidance for stock exchanges, investors, corporations and others that have a role in the process of developing good corporate governance. They have also been adopted as one of the Financial Stability Board's Key Standards for Sound Financial Systems.

MiFID II related developments

FCA publishes third MiFID II consultation paper

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published consultation paper CP16/29 ‘Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II implementation—Consultation Paper III’ on the implementation of the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) (Directive 2014/65/EU).

MiFID II comes into effect on 3 January 2018. The consultation paper forms part of the FCA’s process to make the necessary changes to the FCA Handbook to implement it.

The consultation paper examines a w