Global Trustee and Fiduciary Services Bite-Sized Issue 5 2025

8 QUICK LINKS AIFMD (UK) CRYPTOASSETS DATA EMIR FINTECH FSB IOSCO MARKET ABUSE REGULATION MICA MIFID II/MIFIR SUSTAINABLE FINANCE/ ESG ASIA PACIFIC AUSTRALIA EUROPE LUXEMBOURG NORTH AMERICA UNITED KINGDOM Global Trustee and Fiduciary Services Bite-Sized | Issue 5 | 2025 MIFID II/MIFIR ESMA Finalises Rules on Firms’ Order Execution Policies Under MiFID II On 10 April 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a Final Report on the rules explaining how investment firms should establish their order execution policies and assess their effectiveness. ESMA says that in the draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) it specifies the rules, with the objective to enhance investment firms’ order execution and foster investor protection. The RTS includes requirements on: • The establishment of an investment firm’s order execution policy; this includes the classification of financial instruments in which firms execute client orders and the selection of venues for the order execution policy; • The investment firm’s procedures and criteria to monitor and regularly assess the effectiveness of its order execution arrangements and order execution policy; • The investment firm’s execution of client orders through own account dealing; and • How an investment firm should deal with specific client instructions. ESMA says the Final Report has been sent to the European Commission (Commission) and ESMA will provide further advice and technical guidance in this area, if requested by the Commission. Link to Final Report here ESMA Delivers Rules on the Single Volume Cap, Systematic Internalisers and Circuit Breakers On 10 April 2025, ESMA published a final report containing a package of three draft technical standards, as part of the Market in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) Review. ESMA says that its final report contains technical standards on the: • Application of the single volume cap and transparency calculations, delivering a significant contribution to simplification and burden reduction with the phasing-out of daily reporting of transparency data for trading venues and Approved Publication Arrangements (APAs); • New qualitative regime for Systematic Internalisers (SIs) harmonising the notification content and clarifying the notification procedure to be followed by investment firms acting as SIs; and • Rules on circuit breakers and operational resilience for trading venues, streamlining trading venues’ practices in setting circuit breakers and the information to be disclosed to the public. Following the DORA framework, the changes to this RTS will contribute to simplification, providing trading venues with enhanced legal clarity. ESMA says that the overall objective is to ensure that the rules from the MiFIR Review are applied consistently, with simplification and burden reduction as the guiding principle. The final report has been sent to the European Commission, who have three months to decide whether to endorse the draft technical standards. Link to Final Report here