Brussels, 24/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - The sharp rise in turbulence on the money markets has forced Spanish and Italian regulators to take measures on Monday 23 July 2012 to restrict stock market volatility. The Spanish regulator, CNMV, has banned short-selling on the stock exchange and other indices for three months, while Italy has banned short-selling of bank and insurance shares until the end of the week (a decision taken by the Italian regulator, Consob).
EU Regulation 236/12 comes into force in November this year and covers the short-selling system and credit default swaps for sovereign debt (CDS) (seeb EUROPE 10495). It gives the European Market Supervision Authority (ESMA) the power to coordinate restrictions of short-selling in order to avoid over-segmentation of measures acorss Europe. ESMA will have the power to force national regulators to accept its decisions for the share market, but not for sovereign debt. (MB/transl.fl)