On December 23, 2015, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published consultation guidelines (Guidelines) in relation to Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFIR). The Guidelines are intended to complement ESMA regulatory technical standards on transaction reporting, reference data, order record keeping and clock synchronization under MiFIR (RTS 22, 23, 24 and 25), and provide guidance as to the requirements under the new technical standards following requests by market participants during consultations on the (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) technical standards.

Specifically, the Guidelines include:

• individual scenarios in relation to transaction reporting activity, and provide precise technical formats and schema to be used to represent the specific reportable values; and

• scenarios applicable to specific order record keeping activities.

The consultation on the Guidelines closes on March 23, with finalized guidelines expected to be published by ESMA in the latter half of 2016.

A copy of the press release can be found here.

A copy of the Guidelines can be found here.