Laws and Regulations

The UK has taken a further cautious step towards the permanent regime which will govern access to its market for EU-based Ucits funds. This came with the introduction of regulations establishing the Overseas Funds Regime (OFR) on 23 February. This gives a clearer but still incomplete picture of how Luxembourg-based retail funds could access UK-based investors over the long term. 

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF on Thursday acknowledged that there is ‘some’ room for improving its international cooperation with other supervisors after a peer review conducted by the EU’s securities markets authority found a number of shortcomings in the supervision of financial institutions that provide cross-border services to retail clients under the European passporting system.

The EU’s financial supervisory authorities on Thursday warned consumers that many crypto-assets are highly risky and speculative. The authorities - including the bodies that supervise securities markets and the banking sector, set out key steps consumers can take to ensure they make informed decisions.

A comprehensive review by the European Commission has the potential to put the European long-term investment funds (Eltif) regime back on track and set it up for the kind of success Ucits funds have experienced. Eltifs can become competitive with AIFs by removing many factors that made Eltif take-up much lower than had initially been hoped. The investment community has been broadly supportive of the reset.

Luxembourg has joined the international move to impose sanctions against Russia for its ruthless invasion of Ukraine. It has followed steps taken by other European and global countries and organisations, including condemning Russia’s aggression, even sending some weaponry and equipment to Ukraine’s beleaguered defenders. But there’s one area where Luxembourg appears to be out of step: the high profile application of the sanctions to Russian oligarchic assets held in this country.

Russian interests have found Luxembourg’s expertise useful as a European business hub for several decades. Here we look at the state of this relationship before the invasion of Ukraine, and how these arrangements might be affected by the subsequent sanctions and the decisions of business leaders and politicians in Luxembourg.

Part of Luxembourg’s effort to tackle allegations that it enables questionable business and tax practices through a lack of transparency will be significantly upgraded through new rules, technical capacities, increased staff and administrative penalties by 2023.

Under a reform project involving a draft Grand-Ducal regulation announced last week, the Luxembourg government body that makes available business registration information – including a ultimate beneficial owner registry -  will be overhauled and have its staff doubled.

It is over a year since the end of the transition period that saw Brexit come into full effect and as regards financial services regulation, the UK still appears to be searching for a new direction. Or maybe this is the plan. Could the strategy be to talk about change for a domestic political audience, while keeping real divergence to a minimum? 

The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma), the EU’s securities markets regulator based in Paris, said on Tuesday that it continues to see high risks to institutional and retail investors of further, possibly significant, market corrections. 

The Chambre des Députés, Luxembourg’s parliament, on Wednesday approved a long-awaited modernisation of the Grand Duchy’s securitisation law that will enable fund managers to actively manage pooled debts such as corporate loans and mortgages.