Non-equity securities – Engagement Paper 4

Read Engagement Paper 4

Why we are publishing this paper

The Government is in the process of creating a new legislative framework that will give powers to the FCA to set rules for what disclosures companies need to provide when seeking to admit securities to a regulated market. In advance of this, we are seeking views on how we might make such rules.

We are interested in your views on whether the current UK prospectus regime broadly works well in the context of wholesale, debt capital markets.

In our view, the current regime in this area does not need a major overhaul but we are interested in views about whether there are any areas that could be improved as part of the new regime.

This paper considers:

• how we may make the debt programme more efficient
• facilitating broader access to listed debt
• structured finance and investment products
• secondary issuances of debt
• green, social or sustainably labelled debt instruments
• the professional securities market

This engagement paper is part of a series of papers setting out our emerging policy thinking on how we may use our rule-making powers under the new regime.

Who is this of interest to

• Companies with securities admitted to UK regulated markets.
• Companies considering seeking admission of their securities to a UK regulated market.
• Existing and prospective investors in companies on UK regulated markets including institutional and individual investors.
• Law firms, investment banks and other advisers, including sponsors who may assist issuers.
• Exchanges or venue operators.
• Intermediaries who may facilitate, including providing execution and/or marketing of investments into companies on UK regulated markets, whether at initial public offering (IPO) or in secondary markets.
• Trade associations representing the various market participants above.
• Accountancy firms and those providing support to issuers in preparing annual financial reports.
• Wider financial market participants such as research analysts.

Next steps

We welcome written responses by email to the questions raised by the engagement papers by 29 September 2023.

Please email: [email protected]

We plan to also gather views through focus groups with key trade associations and other relevant market participants and stakeholders later this year.

Feedback on this paper, and the other papers in the series, is intended to create a dialogue which will inform further development of proposed rules which we will consult on formally during 2024.