Policy
The regulatory environment for the provision and payment of equity research continues to evolve rapidly in Continental Europe while it has stabilized in the UK and the US. There are four sub-sections in the section for the UK, US, France and the EU, with background and papers on the respective regulatory changes.
The highest profile regulatory change impacting independent research firms and their investment management clients was the "unbundling" of commissions for execution and research in the UK. From 1 January 2006, investment managers had to separately disclose to end clients their spending on execution and research.
Recently there has been an issue raised about the payment for corporate access services using commissions. See the article: FT - Call to ban 'corporate access'. Euro IRP is taking this up with the successor entity to the FSA.