AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The EU securities market regulation is under a reform. The new Market Abuse Regulation (the MAR) was passed in summer 2014 and it will come into force and replace the current Market Abuse Directive (the MAD) in July 2016. The MAR has been enacted as a regulation and it thus has a direct effect, i.e. it will be directly applicable in all Member States. The MAR will tighten the ongoing disclosure regulation, which means in practice that issuers are required to disclose more information than ever before. Most importantly, the MAR extends the obligation to disclose also to uncertain information relating to future events. Consequently, such a far-reaching disclosure obligation requires correction not to jeopardise issuer interests. Correction is provided by the delayed disclosure provision, the interpretation of which will be the hot question of the EU disclosure regulation in the near future. The delayed disclosure mechanism will serve as a safe harbour to issuers. However, entry to the safe harbour is strictly regulated by three criteria (i.e. legitimate interests of the issuer, misleading the public and confidentiality of the information) which need to be met in order to grant the access to the harbour. The interpretation of the criteria is a dilemma and a solution to it needs to be found to strike an optimal balance between disclosure and delayed disclosure. In other words, there is a conflict of transparency, favoured by investors, and confidentiality, favoured by issuers, and a balance between these conflicting interests is needed. Finding the optimal balance is not only in the interest of issuers and investors but also of the market in general, as disclosure is a key to efficient and well-functioning securities markets. The answer to the dilemma lies in how broadly or narrowly the criteria for delayed disclosure are interpreted, and this thesis thus focuses on searching for the optimal balance by means of interpretation. The thesis concentrates on the following research problems: 1) what is the current status of the disclosure regulation across Europe, 2) on what grounds may an issuer delay the disclosure of inside information, and 3) how should the disclosure and delayed disclosure be balanced i.e. what should the balance be between transparency and confidentiality? Discussing the first question lays the foundation for the thesis. The implementation of MAD in chosen Member States, i.e. Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, will be discussed in order to map the current status of the disclosure regulation and the challenges that will be faced in the era of the MAR. Discussing the second question includes a thorough analysis of the criteria for delayed disclosure, the interpretation of which is the key to finding the optimal balance for transparency and confidentiality. Again, the practices adopted across Member States will be analysed in order to get an overall picture of the functioning of the delayed disclosure mechanism. Finally, the third question leads to the core of the thesis and to…