Europe Reg Desk
Monday, 2026-10-19 · covering the last 72h (Friday evening + weekend)
EU & ESMA
ESMA finalises revised MAR guidelines on delaying disclosure of inside information. The final report (16 Oct) updates the legitimate-interest grounds issuers can rely on to delay public disclosure under the Market Abuse Regulation: it adds five new grounds (a public-authority request not to disclose; the issuer needing more information for the market to correctly assess the inside information; risk of losing a business opportunity from disclosing sensitive commercial information; jeopardising the appointment of a governing-body member or key manager; and protecting a group company's own delay), while removing the grounds tied to "protracted processes" (issuers no longer have to disclose inside information about a process before it concludes, a change already in force since June). The guidelines apply once published in all 24 EU languages on ESMA's site. Final report
ESMA marks one year to EU T+1 go-live, calls the settlement-discipline framework complete. In a 16 Oct statement ahead of the 11 October 2027 T+1 transition, ESMA said the regulatory framework is now complete following the amended RTS on Settlement Discipline and revised guidelines on standardised allocation/confirmation messaging — under which, from 7 December 2026, investment firms and clients must use electronic, standardised, machine-readable communication channels for allocations and confirmations (already flagged in the prior edition). ESMA is now pressing market participants to test readiness against the EU T+1 Industry Committee's recommendations; no new rule beyond the December deadline. Statement
Checked and otherwise quiet: no outcome yet on ESMA's CCP collateral-tokenisation call for evidence (opened 9 Oct, runs to 15 Jan 2027) or on the direct-supervision package for CCPs/CSDs/asset managers (still at European Parliament ECON committee-report stage; no plenary vote found). The ECB, screened for rulemaking only, issued nothing new on TARGET2/T2S, the collateral framework or SSM supervisory requirements in the window.
United Kingdom
No new FCA consultation or policy statement dated 16–19 October found (checked the FCA's news and publications pages directly); the comment windows for CP26/30 (equity market transparency) and CP26/31 (consolidated tape) both closed 16 October with no outcome statement yet. An FCA statement dated 16 Oct revoking historic LIBOR/EURIBOR-related bans on four individuals is an enforcement reversal, not a rule change, and is out of scope for this desk. The PRA's October Regulatory Digest is not due until 1 November; no other Bank of England/PRA policy statement or consultation found in the window.
National & exchanges
Checked individually via search (BaFin and AMF newsrooms are known-unreadable shells): BaFin, Deutsche Börse/Xetra, AMF, Euronext (Paris/Amsterdam/Brussels/Milan), Consob/Borsa Italiana, AFM and Nasdaq Nordic (Stockholm/Copenhagen) show no new rule, circular or consultation dated 16–19 October. CNMV's automatic-delisting-threshold draft circular closes for comment today, 19 October, with no decision expected before the next edition. SIX/SER-AG's most recent rule changes (fee-schedule and clearing-eligibility amendments) took effect 1 October and predate this window. No rule changes found from SNB, Riksbank, Norges Bank or Danmarks Nationalbank; Norges Bank's Circular 3/2026 setting bank-reserve quotas from 1 October is a liquidity-operations circular, not a market-structure rule, and is left out as out of scope.
Informational only — summaries of public regulatory and central bank sources; not advice.