On 16 October 2020, the French Anticorruption Agency (the “AFA”) released the expected draft update of its guidelines published in the French Official Journal on 22 December 2017 “aimed at helping all public and private entities to implement anticorruption prevention and detection processes”. Continue reading
Tag: France
Corporate Crime update – December 2019
Welcome to the December 2019 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters.
Corporate Crime update – Autumn 2019
Welcome to the Autumn 2019 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters. This bumper edition covers a number of jurisdictions, and includes content from the summer break.
Herbert Smith Freehills launches updated guide to cross-border financial services investigations
Financial services firms conduct their business activities across markets and borders, often performing services and holding data in locations other than those in which they interact with their clients. Over a decade after the financial crisis, their regulators remain under sustained public and political pressure to improve customer outcomes and punish poor conduct. When issues arise, those regulators frequently need to seek assistance from their global counterparts to be able to unravel what has occurred, irrespective of where it took place.
Understanding how and when regulators interact with each other and with firms across borders, how firms are required, or expected, to respond, and how to handle multiple proceedings in different jurisdictions, is more critical than ever.
This fourth edition of “The Long Arm of Regulation: Responding to Cross-Border Financial Services Investigations”, Herbert Smith Freehills’ guide to cross-border financial services investigations, gives an overview of how to approach these issues, and aims to assist firms in navigating the differing regimes across 15 key jurisdictions, including, for the first time in this edition, South Africa. The guide covers a range of important topics, including the regulators’ breadth of powers, mechanisms for obtaining – and withholding – information, consequences for failing to comply, and the management of competing confidentiality and reporting obligations.
In producing this publication, we have drawn on the expertise of our financial services regulation practice across our international network of offices and through our formal alliance with Prolegis (Singapore). In addition, we are enormously grateful for contributions from law firms Anderson Mori & Tomotsune (Japan), Stibbe (the Netherlands) and Homburger (Switzerland).
Product Intervention Powers and Design and Distribution Obligations in Financial Services: A Cross-Border Perspective
Authors: Hannah Cassidy, Clive Cunningham, Natalie Curtis, Javier de Carlos, Katherine Dillon, Matthias Gippert, Leopoldo Gonzalez Echenique, Vincent Hatton, Patricia Horton, Pierre Le Ninivin, Kai Liebrich, Natasha Mir, Stuart Paterson, Fiona Smedley, Jenny Stainsby, Jennifer Xue
Many regulators view their ability to intervene as one of their key supervisory tools to reduce harm in cases where there is a risk of significant consumer detriment or threat to financial markets.
At the same time, many jurisdictions have put in place product governance regimes for financial services firms which aim to avoid, or at least mitigate from an early stage, any potential risks of failure to comply with investor protection rules. In particular, the design and distribution obligations under these product governance regimes aim to overcome the limitations of disclosure and ensure that firms which manufacture and distribute financial products take some responsibility and adopt a more targeted customer-centric approach.
The stages of development, level of detail, scope and coverage of regulators’ product intervention powers, and the product design and distribution obligations under product governance regimes, vary across jurisdictions.
Our guide (which can be found here) summarises the frameworks in selected jurisdictions, allowing a high-level comparison of the different regimes and offering a glimpse of the direction of travel.
KEY CONTACTS
Clive Cunningham
Partner, London
+44 20 7466 2278
Fiona Smedley
Partner, Sydney
+61 2 9225 5828
Hannah Cassidy
Partner, Hong Kong
+852 21014133
Natalie Curtis
Partner, Singapore
+65 6868 9805
Herbert Smith Freehills edits and contributes chapters to Getting the Deal Through – Financial Services Litigation 2018
There has been a significant rate of global growth of litigation in the financial services sector following the 2008 global financial crisis. While the existence of financial services litigation is truly a global phenomenon, it has become apparent that the law and procedures in relation to such disputes have evolved in different ways across the jurisdictions.
The recently published third edition of Getting the Deal Through – Financial Service Litigation, edited by Damien Byrne Hill and Ceri Morgan, compiles chapters dedicated to financial services litigation from jurisdictions across the globe, including those contributed by a number of our offices.
The text charts the growth of litigation in the financial sector worldwide, with expert authors answering key questions in major jurisdictions. Topics include: common causes of action; powers of regulatory authorities; alternative dispute resolution; specialist courts and procedures; disclosure requirements; data governance issues; remedies and enforcement; and changes in the regulatory landscape since the financial crisis.
Please find attached a copy of the publication, also available on the Getting the Deal Through website.
Contributing offices
Australia – Andrew Eastwood, Tania Gray and Simone Fletcher
France – Clément Dupoirier and Antoine Juaristi
Germany – Matthias Wittinghofer and Tilmann Hertel
Hong Kong – Gareth Thomas, William Hallatt, Hannah Cassidy, Dominic Geiser, Jojo Fan and Valerie Tao
Indonesia – Alastair Henderson and Emmanuel Chua
South Africa – Peter Leon and Jonathan Ripley-Evans
United Arab Emirates – Stuart Paterson, Natasha Mir and Sanam Khan
United Kingdom – Damien Byrne Hill, Karen Anderson, Ceri Morgan, Ajay Malhotra, Sarah Thomas and Ian Thomas
United States – Scott Balber, Jonathan Cross and Michael R Kelly
Accreditation: Reproduced with permission from Law Business Research Ltd. Getting the Deal Through – Financial Services Litigation 2018 was first published in August 2018. For further information please visit www.gettingthedealthrough.com.
SFC and AMF sign MOU on mutual recognition of funds between Hong Kong and France
Last week, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) of France on mutual recognition of funds (MRF) between Hong Kong and France.
The MOU allows eligible Hong Kong funds and French UCITS funds to be distributed to retail investors in France and the public in Hong Kong respectively, through a streamlined authorisation process. The types of funds currently covered are equity funds, bond funds and mixed funds.
#MAR_bitesize
New Market Abuse powers for the FCA
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) Regulations 2016
On 29 June 2016, the Government adopted the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) Regulations 2016 (the “regulations“). This left negligible time for Parliamentary scrutiny before they came into force with the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 (“MAR”) on 3 July 2016.
The purpose of the regulations was to amend UK law to ensure its compatibility with MAR, to give effect to those parts of MAR which required implementing legislation, and to ensure it is fully enforceable in the UK. The regulations amend the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) and give the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) new powers to:
- require information from issuers and other persons;
- compel the publication of information by issuers,
- compel the publication of corrective statements by issuers and other persons;
- suspend trading in financial instruments; and
- impose penalties, prohibitions and suspensions or restrictions for contraventions of the market abuse regulation.
Market abuse update – July 2016
The Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and the Criminal Sanctions (Market Abuse) Directive came into application in Europe on 3 July 2016. Various outstanding pieces of secondary legislation were published in the Official Journal shortly before then, and further material has emerged since 3 July. ESMA published final form guidelines in relation to delay in disclosure of inside information and market soundings and an updated MAR Q&A document on 13 July, and on 26 July, its final report on Draft Implementing Technical Standards on sanctions and measures under MAR. Further guidelines are expected later this year.
In our latest update, we discuss the implications of these developments, the secondary legislation under MAR and the changes made to the UK regulatory regime to accommodate it. We also look at some recent enforcement actions in a range of different jurisdictions.
#MAR_bitesize
Extra-territorial scope of MAR: impact on non-EU firms
Article 2(4) of MAR applies the "prohibitions and requirements" within MAR to behaviour that occurs both within the EU and in a third county. In other words, MAR is intended to have extra-territorial effect, capturing individuals and firms operating outside of the EU.