ESMA To Centralize Reporting Data

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has launched two major projects to centralize trade reporting under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive/Regulation (MiFID/R) and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).

The projects were delegated to ESMA by National Competent Authorities (NCAs). The first—the Instrument Reference Data Project—is to provide a central facility for instrument and trading data and the calculation of the MiFIR transparency and liquidity thresholds.

The second—the Trade Repositories Project—is intended to provide a single access point to trade repositories data under EMIR.

In agreeing that ESMA will develop these centralized solutions, NCAs have delegated some tasks related to data collection requirements under MiFID/R and the Market Abuse Directive (MAR) to ESMA, as well as the creation of a central access point for regulators to data of the EU's six trade repositories.

Both projects are intended to allow ESMA to collect data directly from market infrastructures (trading venues or trade repositories) in a more efficient and harmonized manner and make them available to NCAs and to the public through a centralized system.

The Instrument Reference Data Project will collect data directly from about 300 trading venues across the EU, which will send their MiFID/MAR data to ESMA, which will then perform and publish the necessary transparency and liquidity threshold calculations.

Once finalized, the database will allow NCAs, and financial market participants, access to all data for financial instruments admitted to trading on EU regulated markets or traded on MiFID venues.

The Trade Repositories Project will provide ESMA and 27 NCAs with immediate access, through a single platform, to the 300 million weekly reports on derivatives contracts received from 5,000 different counterparties across the EU trade repositories.

The Instrument Reference Data Project is expected to go live in early 2017, and the Trade Repositories Project will go live in 2016.