At its November meeting, the Bank of England’s (BoE’s) securities lending committee listened to presentations from EquiLend and Pirum on settlement efficiency trends and tools ahead of the shift to T+1.
FCA noted that the Accelerated Settlement Task Force was due to publish its report on whether and how the UK market should migrate to T+1 settlement. The FCA said that there was a discussion in the market on whether the report should recommend a concrete or conditional migration date taking into account further work and lessons learned from the migration of other countries especially those in North America.
The UK’s finance ministry (HMT) published a draft Statutory Instrument for the new UK short-selling regime, with plans to publish a final rule in 2024. HMT had also separately published a final Statutory Instrument increasing the position reporting threshold from 0.1% to 0.2% net short positions of issued share capital starting 5 February 2024.
There was agreement over the potential to set up a tax and regulation sub-Committee, to focus on the consequences of wider regulation on securities lending.