A brief guide to the EU Short Selling Regulation

At the height of the financial crisis a number of EU Member States introduced emergency measures to restrict or ban short selling in some or all securities. These measures did not take a unified approach. As such, the new European Regulation on short selling and certain aspects of credit default swaps is intended to create an EU common regulatory framework for dealing with short selling issues. The SSR came into force on 1 November 2012.

This white paper from Macfarlanes' financial services team outlines the SSR's key features; and provides a summary of the legislation's scope, disclosure requirements of significant net short positions, restrictions on uncovered short sales, sovereign credit default swaps and more.