FCA consultation to remove the requirement to publish interim management statements
24 Jul, 2014
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a consultation proposing the removal of the requirement to publish interim management statements (or quarterly financial reports) which are currently included with Section 4.3 of the Disclosure and Transparency Rules (DTR).
In November the government expressed their support for the removal of mandatory quarterly reporting requirements which were one of the recommendations of Professor Kay in his review of the UK Equity market in 2012 (the “Kay Review”) (link to BIS website). The Kay Review sought to address the issue of short-termism in the equity market.
The removal of mandatory quarterly reporting has been agreed at a European Union level as part of the amendments to the Transparency Directive and must be transposed into UK law by November 2015. However, as part of the government’s autumn statement, they announced that they would bring forward this change in advance of the November 2015 deadline and adopted enabling secondary legislation in June 2014 allowing the FCA to implement this change.
The FCA proposes to:
- Remove the requirements in DTR 4.3 completely
- Remove DTR 4.4.6R and DTR 6.3.5R(3)(C) which will become obsolete
- Consequential amendments to others rules in the DTR that refer to interim management statements.
Comments are invited in writing until 4 September 2014.
Click for:
- Press release (link to FCA website).
- Full consultation paper ‘CP14/12: Removing the Transparency Directive’s requirement to publish interim management statements’ (link to FRC website).
- UK Accounting Plus news item on the government proposals.
