Transparency for Listed Companies Directive

The Transparency Directive or Directive 2004/109/EC is an EU Directive of 2004. In 2004, it was a revision of the Directive 2001/34/EC. The Transparency Directive was amended in 2013 by the Transparency Directive Amending Directive (Directive 2013/50/EU).

The Transparency Directive improves the harmonisation of information duties of issuers, whose securities are listed at a regulated market at a within the European Union, and further market participants. The aims of these amendments are to establish minimum requirements regarding the financial information distribution all over the European Union and an increase in transparency at the capital markets and in investor protection to meet information deficits in a developing financial market environment.

The process, which resulted in the 2004 version of the EU Transparency Directive, passed several years, consultations and revisions. The first step towards the EU Transparency Directive of 2004 took place in July 2001 when the Commission of the European Union announced the first consultation regarding the transparency on publicly traded companies. This first consultation period lasted from 17 July 2001 until 30 September 2001. During that time interested parties were able to contribute comments on the proposals, which the Commission drafted in its own consultation paper, regarding the new regime on disclosure requirements. Interested parties could be the issuers themselves, national agencies and associations, state authorities and European authorities, such as CESR. The consultation paper of the Commission suggested a division of disclosure duties, in periodic and ongoing obligations, for example for financial reports (periodical) and ad hoc notifications (ongoing), and a focus on the publications of those information through a medium on a Europe-wide basis as well as the control of these duties by the national supervisory authorities. Until the end of the consultation period the Commission received 90 contributions from market participants all over Europe, whereas most of the answers came from British and German interest groups. Mostly these answers complied with the suggestions, which were made up by the Commission.

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