On Wednesday 30 August, MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) took stock of the various aspects of the proposal for a ‘Listing Act’ (see EUROPE 13190/28), presented by the Commission last 7 December as part of the package of measures to further establish the capital markets union (see EUROPE 13079/2).
“We’re behind schedule and we’re not getting the results we need. Some people say that the project is in crisis, and I tend to agree. The European market has lost ground internationally”, said the rapporteur on capital markets, Alfred Sant (S&D, Maltese), from the outset, before going on to outline the main issues that need to be resolved before the European Parliament can reach a common position.
A majority of the political groups are in favour of limiting the size of the prospectus, the document that must contain the detailed information that a company must produce in order to issue securities to the general public. However, the EPP and Greens/EFA groups expressed their opposition to the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.
For Markus Ferber, adding ESG criteria to prospectuses would represent “more constraints when the aim is to reduce them”. Conversely, Claude Gruffat (Greens/EFA, French) would like to see the proportion of activities aligned with the EU taxonomy or the proportion of investments used to finance activities linked to coal, oil or gas mentioned.
The MEPs, who want to complete the dossier before the end of their mandate in 2024, will also have to reach a consensus on the issue of multiple-voting shares. Here again, the European Parliament’s political groups generally support the extension of a structure to all markets and not just some of them.
In detail, however, the EPP expressed concern that the safeguards that could be put in place for shareholders could be too restrictive. Eva-Maria Poptcheva (Spanish) of Renew Europe believes that the sunset clause should be reviewed to avoid the expiry of the multiple voting system, which “would be detrimental to market stability”. “We will have to find the right balance between protecting minority shareholders and ensuring shareholder commitment, while preserving the business models of start-ups and SMEs”, Claude Gruffat summed up.
The section on market abuse also occupied part of the discussions. Most of the groups support the rapporteur’s proposal to reject the abolition of the insider list proposed by the Commission and to maintain current practices, even if internal negotiations will still have to be conducted on the confidentiality of the information contained in these lists.
MEPs will also have to reach agreement on certain exemption thresholds – in particular with regard to the obligation to publish a prospectus – and on the decoupling of research costs for small caps and IPO costs. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)