Prospectuses: EU Parliament adopts amendments to proposed regulation

The EU Parliament has adopted a set of amendments to the Commission's proposal for a regulation on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading. The main amendments adopted by the EU Parliament include:

• reducing the scope of the regulation so that it does not apply to offers of securities to fewer than 350 persons per Member State and to a total of no more than 4,000 persons in the EU (other than certain investors), or to offers with a total consideration in the EU below EUR 1 million, calculated over a period of 12 months;
• including an optional exemption for offers that do not exceed EUR 5 million, calculated over a period of 12 months;
• allowing, in exceptional circumstances, an issuer to produce a longer summary of up to 10 sides of A4-sized paper when printed (instead of six) where the complexity of the issuer's activities so requires; and
• the introduction of the concept of an EU growth prospectus for the proportionate disclosure regime set out in Article 15. Such prospectuses will have reduced content requirements and be in a standardised format.

The proposal has been referred back to the Parliament's ECON Committee for further deliberation.