On December 7, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published transitional transparency calculations (TTC) for equity and bond instruments for the purposes of the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR). MiFID II and MiFIR introduce transparency requirements for equities, bonds, structured finance products, emission allowances and derivatives.

The implementing measures on transparency for financial instruments require national competent authorities (NCAs) to compute and publish transparency calculations on financial instruments, including transitional calculations prior to the date of application of MiFIR, January 3, 2018. NCAs from the European Economic Area (EEA), with the exception of Poland, delegated the compilation of the TTC to ESMA. The relevant NCAs have approved the final published results.

The TTC includes equity instruments available for trading in September 2017 and bonds available for trading in October 2017. The TTC for instruments listed after these dates will be performed by NCAs and ESMA will publish that information in January 2018, as well as reference data, transparency calculations and double volume cap information on a regular basis.

ESMA states that it has compiled the TTC with considerable care and to the best of its ability. However, it warns that given the scope and complexity of the calculations, including the various underlying data sources, future corrections of the TTC cannot be ruled out. ESMA expects to continuously supplement and update the information provided, where necessary.

The TTC is available here.