On 11 July 2007, the Luxembourg Parliament approved bill number 5627 amending the law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector. The bill will come into effect on 1 November 2007. Hereunder, we briefly outline the main amendments:
• Transposition of the European Directive 2004/39/CE on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID) into Luxembourg legislation.
• Review of the status of certain Professionals of the Financial Sector (PFS) and creates five new categories of PFS.
Firstly, certain categories of PFS, such as financial advisors, brokers in financial instruments and market makers changed from “PFS other than investment firms” to “investment firms”. From now on they will benefit from the European passport. On the contrary, registrar agents (i.e. TAs) and professional custodians of financial instruments are no longer “investment firms” but “PFS other than investment firms”, and loose the benefit of the European passport.
Secondly, five new categories of PFS have been created by the draft law:
– Financial intermediation companies;
– Investment firms operating a Multilateral Trading Facility (“MTF”) in Luxembourg;
– Operators of a regulated market authorized in Luxembourg;
– Primary IT systems operators of the financial sector;
– Secondary IT systems and communication networks operators.
• Reduction of the minimum share capital requirements for certain types of PFS.
This measure gives highly qualified financial specialists the opportunity to access the profession easier than before.