External Event

After one year of the entry into force of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), the Commission organised a conference on November 13, 2008 in Brussels, Belgium. MiFID has revolutionised the landscape of European financial markets regulation, bringing about more competition and innovation. New multilateral trading facilities such as Turquoise or Chi-X have emerged, eroding market shares and profits of regulated exchanges. The conference comes at a difficult time for financial markets, but it aims at summarising MiFID's achievements in this past year.

The Commission (DG Internal Market and Services) organised a conference on the Market Abuse Directive (MAD) held in Brussels on 12 November 2008. The conference brought together senior policy makers, regulators, industry experts and academia to discuss the review of MAD.

Four panels debated the different topics:

The European Commission held an open hearing on the MiFID review of the exemption regime concerning specialist commodity derivatives firms ex art. 2(1)(i) and (k).

Please find the report of the event attached.

Presentation of the European Commission study conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales on the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

Venue De Warande, Rue Zinnerstraat 1 B-1000 Brussels

November 1st 2007 marks the beginning of an ongoing process that will change the face of the European markets. TradeTech MiFID Spring 2008will present the most experienced and well regarded MiFID experts from the European buy and sell sides, Giving you first hand strategic information from leading financial institutions about the future of investing in Europe’s markets post MiFID

Key topics to be discussed:

­The 6th Annual European Financial Services Conference­ hosted by Assonime, Houston Consulting Europe and Merrill Lynch.

On July 15, 2008 in Brussels the European Commission held an open hearing on retail investment products in order to shed light on the developments of this critical sector. The initiative took place less than one year ­after the Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) regime came into force and raised issues mainly pertaining to five fundamental issues somewhat related to consumer protection and competition: disclosure, conflicts of interest, level playing field, complexity of investment products and regulatory arbitrage