A New Regime For The Reporting Of Net Short Positions In Equities To The AMF And The Market

Amendments to Book II (Issuers and Financial Disclosure) of the AMF General Regulation were approved by the order of 28 October 2010, published in the Journal Officiel dated 6 November 2010.

To fulfil its commitment to promptly implement the recommendations announced by CESR in May 2010, the AMF amended its General Regulation to introduce a comprehensive transparency regime for net short positions in equities traded on a French regulated market (Euronext) or organised multilateral trading facility (Alternext). A new article, 223-37, was introduced for this purpose. It has been supplemented by Implementing Instruction 2010-08, published today.

This amendment will take effect on 1 February 2011. The measures taken by the AMF on 19 September 2008 to prohibit short selling of specified financial stocks will no longer apply as from that date.

The new system heralds the forthcoming transparency regime to be implemented in 2012 through the European regulation on short selling.