On 01 December, the amendment for the Act on Securities and Investment Services no. 566/2001 Coll. (Securities Act) came into force.
The objective of the amendment is:
- to carry out adjustments on the national regulation of CSD, ie to delete provisions which directly duplicate the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR)
- to implement the Commission Implementing Directive (EU) 2015/2392 of 17 December 2015 on Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Market Abuse Regulation) with regards to reporting to the competent authorities in the event of actual or potential infringements of that regulation
- to resolve queries, especially regarding the involvement of central depositories in the project T2 Securities and treatment of hybrid financial instruments.
With regards to CSDR, the amendment implemented is applicable to CSD participants in addition to the existing institute of CSD members. The requirements for participation at CSD have already been defined based on CSDR. Only fulfilment of these CSD participation requirements will allow the participant to acquire membership to the CSD. The CSD will have to undergo the process of relicensing whereas the current CSD members will have to provide sufficient evidence that they meet the requirements to be CSD participants. The process is expected to take place next year after the regulatory technical standards on settlement discipline (under CSDR) will have come into effect.
The amendment requires the CSD to publish information based on issued, changed or cancelled issuances of securities admitted to the Stock Exchange. It also requires the CSD to provide information on its webpage in case of blocking of an entire issue of securities admitted to the Stock Exchange as opposed to publishing it in a national newspaper.
As for MAR, the amendment proposes the unification of the process of reporting the infringements for all segments of the financial market through the Amendment of the Act on Supervision over the Financial Market no. 747/2004.
Impact on investors: Changes on local legislation were made in order to achieve compliance with CSDR, T2S and MAR.