Legal Updates

Commercial Law – Acquisitions Directive – Implementation

Last year, on the 22nd of September 2008, HM Treasury published a consultation document entitled “Implementation of the Acquisitions Directive”. The document provided details on how the government and the Financial Services Authority (“FSA”) were proposing to implement the acquisitions directive (“the Directive”)  in UK law.

The Directive was previously adopted by the European Parliament and European council in September 2007 and was given a time limit in which it had to be implemented into UK law. This time limit expired on the 21st of March 2009.

 The government and the FSA both support the Directive's aims, one of the main purposes of which is to align the processes for supervisory approvals of acquisitions. This is intended to ensure consistency between all three financial sectors, namely credit institutions, insurance and securities. When the initial discussion paper was made public in September 2006, a substantial number of respondents strongly supported this approach.

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© RT COOPERS, 2009. This Briefing Note does not provide a comprehensive or complete statement of the law relating to the issues discussed nor does it constitute legal advice. It is intended only to highlight general issues. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in relation to particular circumstances.