On 30 November 2015, the European Commission published its proposals for a new prospectus regulation to reform the European prospectus regime.
The proposals will significantly impact equity capital markets participants:
- where there is no offer to the public, issuers will have the ability to issue up to 20% of existing capital in a 12-month period without the need for a prospectus
- existing listed issuers and SMEs will be able to benefit from new minimum disclosure regimes for their prospectuses
- the contents and format of summaries will be changed, limiting the length of summaries to six pages and limiting to 10 the number of risk factors included in a summary
- risk factors will be required to be categorised according to their materiality
- issuers will be able to publish a uniform registration document which can be used both for the prospectus regime and the transparency regime
- issuers will be able to incorporate by reference a wider range of information