The European Commission has confirmed a one-year delay to the introduction of new trading rules for capital markets firms under the MiFID II regime.
In announcing the well-flagged extension to 3 January 2018, the Commission cites the "exceptional technical implementation challenges" faced by regulators and market participants.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) called for a delay in the implementation late last year, reflecting troubles around the building of transaction and position reporting systems, for which the final technical rules had yet to be published. Under the MiFID II regime, Esma has to collect data from about 300 trading venues on about 15 million financial instruments.
Jonathan Hill, Commissioner for financial services, financial stability and capital markets union says: "Given the complexity of the technical challenges highlighted by Esma, it makes sense to extend the deadline for MiFID II. We will therefore give people another year to prepare properly and make the necessary changes to their systems. Meanwhile, we are pressing ahead with the level II legislation to implement MiFID II and expect to announce those measures shortly."