Transparency Requirements and Waivers

  • Transparency Requirements and Waivers

1.1 Pre- and Post-Trade Transparency

MiFID II introduced a pre- and post-trade transparency regime for non-equity instruments across EU financial markets, tailored to the typology of trading protocol operated by the venue.

1.2 Waivers for Non-Equity Instruments

The new non-equity financial instrument transparency regime allows Competent Authorities to waive the obligation for trading venues to make pre-trade information public in the following instances:

  • Illiquidity – instruments which are not deemed to have a liquid market by ESMA;
  • LIS – orders that are large in scale compared with normal market size;
  • SSTI – actionable indications of interest in request-for-quote and voice trading systems that are above a size specific to the financial instrument, which would expose liquidity providers to undue risk and takes into account whether the relevant market participants are retail or wholesale investors;
  • OMF – orders in an orders management facility of a trading venue pending disclosure as per MiFIR Article 9(1a), such as iceberg orders;
  • Package orders – package orders, such as orders/quotes for switches and butterflies, that meet at least one of the following conditions:
  1. at least one of its components is a financial instrument for which there is not a liquid market, unless there is a liquid market for the package order as a whole;
  2. at least one of its components is large in scale compared with the normal market size, unless there is a liquid market for the package order as a whole;
  3. all of its components are executed on a request-for-quote or voice system and are above the size specific to the instrument.

1.3 Deferrals for Non-Equity Instruments

In addition to pre-trade transparency waivers, MiFIR provides for post-trade transparency deferrals in the following instances:

  • Illiquidity – instruments which are not deemed to have a liquid market by ESMA;
  • LIS – transactions that are large in scale compared with normal market size;
  • SSTI – transactions that are between an investment firm dealing on own account other than on a matched principal basis and another counterparty and which are above a size specific to the instrument;
  • Package Transaction – package transactions, such as switches and butterflies, that meet at least one of the following conditions:
  1. at least one of its components is a financial instrument for which there is not a liquid market;
  2. at least one of its components is large in scale compared with the normal market size;
  3. the transaction is between an investment firm dealing on own account other than on a matched principal basis and another counterparty, and at least one of the components is above a size specific to the instrument.

Transactions which benefit from the standard post-trade transparency deferral may instead be made public no later than 19:00 local time on the second working day after the date of the transaction.

Individual Competent Authorities may instead require some details of transactions which have benefitted from deferred publication to be published immediately or may provide the option to omit volume or to aggregate transactions over an extended deferral period.

1.4 MTS Approach to MiFID II Transparency

The items below are relevant from an MTS perspective:

MTS Cash Markets “Continuous auction Order book trading system”:

  • Publication pre-trade of the aggregate orders and volumes at each price level for the 5 best bid and offers in real time.
  • Post-trade publication of all trade information in real time.
  • Exceptions:
  1. Mid-Price Order Book: Pre-Trade Transparency Waivers always applied to waive pre-trade transparency requirement.
  2. Trade Registration functionality: Pre-Trade Transparency Waivers and Post-Trade Transparency Deferrals always applied to waive pre-trade transparency requirement and to defer the publication of post-trade transparency.

BondVision “RFQ trading system”:

Unless there are any available waivers and/or deferrals:

  • Publication pre-trade of the relevant quote(s) made executable within each RFQ.
  • Post-trade publication of all trade information in real time.
  • Eligible central bank activities in the performance of monetary, foreign exchange and financial stability policy which match certain conditions are exempt from these requirements under MiFIR Article 1(6) and art 14 RTS 2, so are not published.

MTS Repo “Not applicable”:

  • No impact on Repo as exempted from MiFIR transparency.