The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, has today published its latest edition of the Spotlight on Markets Newsletter.

Your one-stop-shop in the world of EU financial markets focuses on the last policy documents related to MiCA, as the regulation officially entered into force across the EU on 30 December 2024. ESMA has delivered extensive regulatory work over the past 18 months, comprising more than 30 Technical Standards and Guidelines.

ESMA put forward Q&As on the application of the Guidelines on funds’ names, providing further explanations on green bonds, the convergence on “meaningfully investing in sustainable investments”, and the definition of controversial weapons.

We also published the Final Report with proposals for amendments related to equity transparency under MiFID II, and the Final Report covering mandates under the MiFIR Review on bond trade transparency and reasonable commercial basis (RCB).

Credit ratings play a critical role in evaluating the creditworthiness of entities and financial products. In this edition of the newsletter, we include an article to help investors and market participants understand the difference between credit ratings and private credit ratings.

Other highlights:

Key findings from the ESAs’ 2024 Dry Run exercise under DORA;
ESAs joint recruitment process for Heads of Unit for the DORA Joint Oversight Team;
Consultation on how the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) can be applied to sustainability reporting;
Feedback statement summarising the responses to consultation on the securitisation disclosure templates under the Securitisation Regulation (SECR);
Consultation following the changes to the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and Market in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) introduced by the Listing Act;
Consultation on technical standards on open-ended loan originating AIFs under the revised Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD).