We have published our comment letter on the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA's) proposal to remove the requirement to publish interim management statements or quarterly financial reports which are currently included within 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 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.

We supported the proposals of the Kay Review to promote long-term decision making, which called for this change. As the amendment to European law has now been transposed into UK law which now permits removal of this requirement, our comments are limited to asking the FCA to confirm removal as soon as they can in order that companies can update markets with their planned timetable for announcements.

The full comment letter can be downloaded below.

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