Brussels, 16/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament will, on Thursday 17 June, approve the inter-institutional first reading political agreement on the legislative proposal amending Directive 2003/71/EC on the prospectus to be published for listed securities (see EUROPE 10081). “In less than a year, we have managed to finalise the revision of the prospectus directive and thereby cut back needless bureaucracy and facilitate the access to the capital market for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” said EP rapporteur Wolf Klinz (ALDE, Germany) in a press release. He spoke of a number of the points in the political agreement: - doubling, from €2.5 to €5 million, the value of securities exempted from the requirement to publish a prospectus in order to improve SME access to capital; - doubling, from €50,000 to €100,000, the value of certain types of securities other than capital issued continuously by a bank and exempted from the requirement to publish a prospectus; - simplification of the prospectus summary while better highlighting the key information; - relaxing, by means of a proportionality clause, requirements on share offer schemes for employees, while retaining the requirement to publish a basic document. However, the inter-institutional agreement retains the €1,000 threshold, to measure the nominal unit value of securities, above which issuers can choose the member state in which to register a prospectus. The European Commission initially proposed removing this threshold.
“We are pleased with the compromise text that we now have and which respects the spirit of the initial proposal,” said Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier during the plenary session debate. He was particularly pleased with the reduced disclosure requirements “for small businesses, small lenders and for the issue of state duties and bonds”. (M.B./transl.rt)