A Financial Services and Markets Bill has been published as part of the government's Future Regulatory Framework Review (FRF Review). The FRF Review was established to determine how the UK's financial services regulatory framework should be amended post-Brexit. The Bill covers a wide range of topics including revoking EU retained laws relating to financial services and markets.
For listed companies the most interesting aspects of the Bill are that once passed it will revoke the UK Market Abuse Regulation and UK Prospectus Regulation – both of which are part of EU retained law post-Brexit. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will then have the power to set the detailed rules on the definition and disclosure of inside information, and when a prospectus is required and what it should contain. See our briefing on reform of the UK's prospectus regime for further detail of the government's proposals in this area.
Reform of the prospectus regime was one of the recommendations of Lord Hill's UK Listing Review. Other recommendations included:
- restructuring the UK's premium and standard listing segments. The FCA published a second discussion paper on this in May this year (see our blog post here for further details) and the deadline for responses is 28 July 2022; and
- a review of the regulation of secondary capital raisings by listed companies.
Our updated summary of the status of the Hill Review recommendations is available here.
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