UK: the super equivalence of the market abuse rules

In February this year, HM Treasury launched a consultation concerning the definition of market abuse within the Financial Services and Markets Act (2000). The FSMA definition is wider than that found in the European Market Abuse Directive (2003/6/EC) (it includes, for example, behaviour based on a wider set of information than the Directive).  For this reason HM Treasury sought views on the desirability of this position of "super equivalence".  HM Treasury's response to the consultation has now been published; to quote directly from the response document (para. 1.2):

Having an effective set of tools to tackle market abuse is crucial. This is a shared objective at the EU level and we are therefore keen that the EU review of the Market Abuse Directive should ultimately deliver an outcome that we consider fully satisfactory for combating market abuse. Pending this work we have decided to retain the areas in which we are superequivalent to the EU’s Market Abuse Directive until December 2009 to enable a wider consideration of their benefits for addressing identified issues with the EU regime and to minimise transition costs for industry".

For further information about the European Market Abuse Directive, see here and for discussion see Siems, M."The EU Market Abuse Directive: A Case-Based Analysis", 2007, available on SSRN here.

Postscript (11 June 2008): The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) Regulations 2008, which will extend the super equivalent provisions until 31 December 2009, have been published and come into force on 30 June 2008.