Laws and Regulations

New rules, new details and a new terminology regarding financial sector outsourcing are being introduced by Luxembourg’s financial regulator CSSF with the presentation of its widely discussed ‘circular 22/806’. These changes, with significant consequences for the use of IT and cloud services, bring greater clarity within the  regulatory framework.

Alarmed efforts by European green and microfinance fund providers, led by Dutch firms Triodos and ASN, to get the European Commission to rectify what looks like an omission in its proposed investment fund legislation risk being dismissed as “small beer” and may be overlooked. “We have to keep making noise.”

Members of the European Parliament on Tuesday rejected a proposal by the European Commission to treat nuclear energy and natural gas as sustainable economic activities. If the vote is confirmed by absolute majority in the July 7 plenary meeting, the Commission’s proposal to update the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities will be sent back to the drawing board.

It’s been nearly a decade since the European Commission set out its ambitious plans for a Capital Markets Union (CMU), diversifying sources of funding in Europe’s economy. Progress so far has been slow and Brussels now has conceded it needs help to persuade member states and its citizens of its merits before it can make another push

As the financial industry continues to call for more clarity and guidance to handle what even supervisors see as the “astonishing” complexity of the emerging EU framework for sustainable finance, impact investments and ESG, European regulators have added a range of technical details to sustainability rules over recent weeks. 

Luxembourg has frozen some 4.3 billion euro in Russian assets, mostly held in shares, bonds and bank accounts, as part of the international sanctions against Russia, the finance ministry said.

The Luxembourg Business Register, at the request of the finance ministry, so far has identified more than 90 persons and 1,100 legal entities registered in the Trade and Companies Register (RCS) for which there are details of persons included in the sanctions lists. 

European central bank policy makers will meet in Amsterdam on Thursday at the invitation of Klaas Knot, the Dutch central bank governor who is known for his hawkish approach to interest rates and his support of a 50 basis point rate hike in July. And: when will the ECB start discussing Quantitative Tightening, like the Fed?

Luxembourg Finance Minister Yuriko Backes is visiting London this week, at a time when advocates of maintaining strong UK-EU financial services relationships are struggling to have their voices heard. The Luxembourg government has sought to take the heat out of Brexit arguments since the 2016 leave vote, and this visit is the latest such effort. 

Frankfurt investigators on Tuesday raided Deutsche Bank and the nearby offices of asset management arm DWS. The suspicion is that DWS is guilty of so-called “greenwashing”. It is alleged that the asset manager systematically exaggerated the sustainable nature of its products. 

Fund administrators active in Luxembourg will be required to produce an annual report on their governance and internal organisation from next year onwards as part of a long-awaited effort by financial supervisor CSSF to modernise a 30-year old supervisory framework in this field.