We disagree with an extension of its scope to UCITS’ and AIFs’ management companies to the scope of the reporting requirements imposed by MiFIR, Art. 26. This extension would be in breach of the principle of proportionality, as:

Article 51(5) of the BMR provides that, unless the Commission has adopted an equivalence decision in relation to a particular third country, a third country administrator has been recognised or a third country benchmark has been endorsed, EU supervised entities may only use a third country benchmark in financial instruments, financial contracts and measurements of the performance of an investment fund that already reference the relevant benchmark prior to 31 December 2021.

EFAMA is grateful for the opportunity to comment on some messages included in the aforementioned roadmap. We believe that these comments should be made clear for all persons interested, especially to those who would like to participate in the upcoming public consultation.

Asset managers represent an important group of benchmark users, either in the case of index funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) - where benchmarks are used as a target for index tracking funds - or in the case of the evaluation of an active manager’s performance - where the fund performance is measured against a selected index or a set of indices.