home
news

Frank Bold's inputs on the EU Capital Markets Union public consultation

share this article

In his political guidelines for the new EU Commission, President Juncker pledged to create a European Capital Markets Union (CMU) to increase non-bank financing of the European economy and further integrate capital markets. In this context, the EU Commission launched a public consultation in February 2015.

Frank Bold submitted a response to the consultation and prepared an accompanying paper outlining the recommendations sent to the EU Commission on the guiding principles of a proper functioning CMU.

Frank Bold has stated that financing through capital markets is not appropriate for most private companies, especially SMEs, which will continue to be primarily financed through relationship-based bank lending. Private companies are often rightly concerned about listing due to the risk of pressure from capital markets. Therefore, Frank Bold recommends clarifications to the role of investors in corporate governance and the protection of corporate purpose.

More broadly, future policy should integrate sustainability and corporate responsibility into its central priorities. We highlight necessary changes to insolvency, company and tax laws for the development of a strong, stable and equitable pan-European financial market.

Our response includes the following recommendations:

  • Clarify the role of investors in corporate governance
  • Address corporate purpose
  • Encourage firms to integrate ESG-performance criteria into remuneration policies
  • Harmonise conflict of law rules
  • Introduce safeguards to proposed single member companies (SUPs)

The next phase will be this summer when the EU's financial services commissioner, Jonathan Hill, will adopt an Action Plan establishing the roadmap to put in place the building blocks for CMU by 2019.

If you are interested to know more about Frank Bold's recommendations to promote sustainable financing of European companies you can read the accompanying paper to the CMU public consultation Written by Paige Morrow, head of Frank Bold Brussels Operations and responsible for the Purpose of the Corporation Project.

Building a Capital Markets Union
    (
99 kB
)

You may also like these news

All news
5/29/2018

A Major Win for Air Quality in Brno, Czech Republic

Czech Supreme Administrative Court ruled today in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in Brno, a Czech city with 370 thousand inhabitants. The Court revoked the city's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment. The reasoning of the ruling has not been made public yet, but the main argument against the plan was that it was not effective enough and would not lead to a swift achievement of the binding air quality standards. A similar ruling was issued in December 2017 with respect to Ostrava and in February 2018 regarding Prague and Usti region.

All news
2/16/2018

A Major Win for Air Quality in Usti region of the Czech Republic

Czech Supreme Administrative Court ruled yesterday in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in Usti region on the northern border of the Czech Republic. The Court partially revoked the region's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment.

All news
2/13/2018

A Major Win for Air Quality in Prague

Prague Municipal Court ruled today in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in the capital of the Czech Republic. The Court revoked most of Prague's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment.